The Right Now

I've shared enough of my life here that most of my regular readers know that my life has been an endless parade of stress and worries.  Sometimes I think I share too much, that my situation isn't much different than what others deal with.  Other times I am so overwhelmed, I share because I can feel so alone.  My depression goes hand in hand with these stressful times.  And when I know my depression is situational, I have many skills to mitigate and overcome.  But when an episode unrelated to situations comes, I am still very vulnerable.  I believe that is where I am now.

I have been overeating and I have not been exercising.  I am in a serious funk, a depression, that I've not been able to shake for many weeks.  The fact that I've been able to post modest losses in my Way Ins is a testament to what I have been able to do while in this depressive cycle.  But, lately, it has been too much.  I am struggling, and I have been gaining.  I cannot focus on this health thing, this weightloss thing right now.  Not in the long term and not in the short term.  It is too depressing to look at it from the bottom of this well and know, pretty much, that I will not succeed in these plans.


But.

There is something I can do.  If I am strong enough.

If I cannot handle the long term or the short term, perhaps I can handle the right now.  Live only in the right now.  Believe only in the right now.  Trust only in the right now.

Because right now I am not eating.  Right now I am choosing to write these words instead.  Right now I am exploring my own self in a very conscious way.  Right now.

Right now is the only place I can live and be alive at the same time.

All this seems so trite, so cliche, and so...obvious.  It belongs on a picture of a cat with some lame caption.  Yet experience tells me that this kind of life is the hardest to live.  Most of us don't know how.  I don't know how, at least to maintain it for more than a few minutes.

As I sit here, at the bottom of my well staring at the grey, wet field stones in front of me, I know this will be the only way to climb back out. One stone at a time, mindful of each stone on my way up.  I know this to be true.  I've been here before.

If my depression is, as I believe, something more than situational, I may be staring at that first stone for awhile.  But it's better than looking up, and it's better than sinking in the mud.