The Secret

Remember how I said that this weekend I was going to be planting in the new veggie beds? Ya well, this is what became of me on Sunday (see photo above). So maybe not the entire day, but this sums up my Sunday. By most standards this really isn't too bad a deal, and to be honest Sunday is really my Saturday and Monday is my Sunday. So technically, I've just swapped my Sunday behavior for my Saturday, thus leaving me to do yard work on my Sunday instead. Lost yet?

Moving on...

Last summer when we were in San Diego with our friends for a week, one of the friends, Adrian, bought me a book while I was picking up a journal. That book was "Tuesdays With Morrie" by Mitch Albom. He said it would change my life. I've had this book for sometime now, and it took me a while before I ever picked it up and actually read from it. But one day as I was headed into the bathroom for my daily constitutional I was franticly looking for reading material and it was just sitting there.

***Side Note: Reading material - Is this as common in your home as it was in mine while growing up? Nick always comments on this whenever I head for the toilet with the latest Cooking Light or some other new periodical that has arrived. In this household, it usually has something to do with cooking, decorating or gardening by the way. I do get National Geographic, one of my favorites. I just can't poop without something to read, that's the point here. I mean, I can, but it's so much easier with a mag. or a book. Is that weird?***End Side Note

The motivation that I received for finally reading this is not important, but it started me down a road of thoughtful consideration about life, my life. I'm not going to comment on the passages it contains here, that would take much too long, but it is full of golden nuggets of inspiration and touching commentary about life. I've mentioned this before I know. More to the point though, this book is less than two hundred pages long and I'm still not done. I don't want it to end I guess. I usually read a chapter at a time, they're short, while I'm on the stoop and now I'm re-reading some of them. It's been several months and now I'm at the end, only a couple of unread chapters to go. I know how it ends but I'm not ready.

Lately I've been struggling personally. I've had a hard time finding happiness in anything I do. When your closest friend tells you that you've lost your spark and that she's worried about you and when someone who is just starting to know you asks if you have always been this sad, you know that you've gone to a level that you need to figure out what the hell is going on. I'm not looking to reveal a big breakthrough here for anyone. That's not the direction I'm headed in, but I know that I've been absent from my blog here, and from activity in my real life as well. I would say it's a safe bet that I'm depressed, Duh right? This isn't the first time for me, but this is hard for me to openly admit here because it's not just fellow bloggers who read this, it's family and friends too.

I've been in this place before and I've found a way out, I'll do it again. It's just that right now I've got a pressure valve inside of me that's creaking and groaning, and no matter how I try, I can't seem to find the strength yet to turn the knob. Every now and then, little bits of steam manage to get out of the seams and cracks that are forming, but for now the mechanism is holding. I see myself standing in there, pacing around the dial that shows the needle dangerously hovering in the red area of the dial, a sure indicator that things are precariously close to falling apart. I don't want that to happen, and yet, I know that I need to find a way to release this pressure inside.

I used to be able to cry, and I mean hard core sob sessions. I get teary eyed sometimes when I'm watching something or when I read, but I never get to that point of total release. I really believe that this is what's needed at this stage, I just can't seem to get there.

I'm going to stop here and end with a quote that's really sticking with me today.

"In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive, right? And at the end of life, when we you get like me (Morrie, who has ALS, Lou Gehrigs Disease), you need others to survive, right?" His voice dropped to a whisper. "But here's the secret: in between, we need others as well."