Weakness and Strength

Over the years starting in childhood, I tried to defy my own desire for things that lighten my mood. I tried to become strong by not needing anything to lighten me up, to lighten the gloom and greyness of life. But now I'm just really crusty and irritated and want to die.

I'm not so sure it worked so well.

I went too far. There is a joyous spot in between extremes, I think. A joyous spot of realising you're weak and sinful and need help and not imagining you can do it all yourself. Not imagining that strength means being solitary, that needing a helping hand is weakness.

Now I cannot accept help or crutches (except the many crutches I naturally cling to after all that I've forced myself to deny). I cling to things to support me in the darkness, alone, unwilling to admit what I have done to myself, unwilling to admit that even as I try to be strong, I am weak under the surface, clinging to addictions that one can always find and hide in the secret darkness.

I am telling myself, so that I can keep myself out of the darkest depths, that I have managed it! I am strong, I have defied death! But I am losing my mind and falling into complete insanity. I can't think clearly, I can't see beautiful things, I won't let myself see beautiful things because if I dared see them, I might start needing them to lighten my mood! I can't possibly let myself even have the possibility of lightening my mood.

Then I would be at risk of falling off the skyscraper of hope and joy and crash back into the abyss of horrifying nothingness! If I dared let myself think there really is anything there in this world, that this world even exists, that Beauty exists, I would be terribly at risk of experiencing a crushing blow to the head that I could never recover from.

Right?

Of course, this is no way to live. I have to choose: do I live, or do I die? And living means opening myself to beauty, and opening myself to the scary possibilities of being crushed, of being teased, of being found to be ignorant and stupid, of not getting to do what I would like to do, all those things.

I have to let it all come flooding upon me, gripping me with an iron grip. At first it will be hard, having lived so long in a state of Stoic Doldrums. The real difficulty comes from what I most fear, which I won't talk about right now. It is not fear of feeling things, but fear of things far beyond that. If only it were just feelings- I rather like that idea.