Dear Diary: The Dark Night of the Soul<\/p>\n
I’ve been under the weather lately.\u00a0 In our current circumstance, it could have meant any number of things from momentary to permanent.\u00a0 Yesterday, I spent the day watching a cooking show and eating a simple bowl of beans and rice.\u00a0 I stayed away from the business of multiple screens and a phone.\u00a0 I let the anxieties of the past and future flow through me, for I am not in control of any of them.\u00a0 Today, I am feeling considerably better and caught up on housework.\u00a0 I had some bean chips and salsa, more simple food, and took some time to smell the spring rain from my porch.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it is just fatigue from being sick and in pain, but I find days like today deeply refreshing.\u00a0 Days like today, I don’t strive to adjust myself to my surroundings or the relationships I try to maintain.\u00a0 Days like today, I am grateful I am not one to chase objects and status.\u00a0 Days like today, I am still keenly aware my heart reaches out, and I have yet to find the limits to my capacity to love, but I don’t feel I need to try to exhaust myself trying to do so.<\/p>\n
I look at where I am and where I’m going; I understand I have a tenuous grasp of one and little idea of the other.\u00a0 With my limitations looking back is not much of an option either.\u00a0 I lose faith in who I thought I was regularly.\u00a0 In the process of being unhappy with myself, I feel I have become increasingly simple.\u00a0 Having spent so long moving from one avoidance method to the next, and each one stripping layers off like water over rock, I find myself feeling like I’ve exhausted all options and not knowing where to go next.\u00a0 With no path to follow, it is a dark night of the soul.<\/p>\n
I find myself struggling to understand my identity.\u00a0 I don’t feel I strongly Identify with or as much of anything.\u00a0 I don’t feel particularly skilled or talented at anything, and I don’t know where my passions lie anymore.\u00a0 Perhaps, spending so much time trying not to be angry or distraught has led me to detach too hard and have become afraid of something deep down.\u00a0 I excel at self-sacrifice but fail fantastically at self-promotion.\u00a0 While on the one hand, I don’t want to just drift from one source of pleasure to the next, I also don’t want just to waste away either.<\/p>\n
For years, I have accepted suffering as something I deserve due to acts I committed in the past.\u00a0 Suffering has been a form of atonement, while I seek out a purpose in life.\u00a0 While I continuously fail, every day, at most of the goals I set for myself, I have gained some inexplicable innate understanding. I’ve acquired something valuable, some broader perspective that allows me to stay more hopeful in the face of constant disappointment and negative feedback.\u00a0 However, it is something I can’t grab or explain.\u00a0 I can’t wield it, I just feel it, a quiet insight I wish I could share with those around me.<\/p>\n
I try to keep this quiet optimism I have about people and the future with me as I try to find my purpose, my path, in life.\u00a0 I feel helpless, powerless, in area after area of my life.\u00a0 I am sincerely connected to the world, and the state of the world is often crushing and alienating, but I can’t find it in me to simply give up.\u00a0 I so often think there’s something wrong with me, why do I care so much?\u00a0 Perhaps being able to cry and smile at the same time is precisely what’s right about me. Maybe instead of just being another voice of cynicism in a sea of similar voices, being one who is willing to be patient and hopeful is worth it all on its own.<\/p>\n
No one accomplishes everything in a vacuum.\u00a0 We all have people we look up to, people we lean on, people who have helped us in curious and surprising ways.\u00a0 Perhaps I am more of a transient figure for most people, giving a little push when they need it.\u00a0 In time these questions will find answers.\u00a0 For now, I need to find where my interests lie, where I should go tomorrow.\u00a0 I have a sense of clarity for things I should not do, but opaqueness for things I should do.\u00a0 For now, in the battle against darkness, stagnation seems to be a victory.<\/p>\n
I stare out my window again and wonder if I am stagnating, or if I’m progressing in ways subtle and unexpected.\u00a0 What was once a mind overpopulated with raging arguments is now a mind, so still, I can often no longer hear my inner voice at all.\u00a0 Words escape my lips, and I listen to them for the first time as soon as the person with whom I’m speaking.\u00a0 Words are typed onto the screen, and I read my sentence with curiosity, wondering where the thought originated.\u00a0 I’ve often been an instinctual, emotionally-driven, person, but now I feel I flow through interactions without thought.\u00a0 I am uncertain how good this is, as I was always the thoughtful one.\u00a0 Perhaps I am learning to trust myself and stop overthinking?\u00a0 Unfortunately, I could be in such a dire state, my loneliness and isolation have removed me from my abilities to function that much further, and this is just another avoidance mechanism.<\/p>\n
Journeys are not things traversed swiftly, nor are they often things we volunteer for and understand their depth when we begin.\u00a0 Our paths change multiple times, sometimes abruptly, and ultimately we walk much of the journey alone.\u00a0 I am not sure what journey I’m on, where I’m going, and struggle to grasp where I’ve been.\u00a0 I would like to believe it involves delicious but simple foods,\u00a0 giving lots of love and having it given back, and being appreciated for having patience and perspective.<\/p>\n
The more I’ve learned, the harder it is not to be alone.\u00a0 I hold out hope that superficiality is not the be-all to end-all, and human relationships aren’t disposable commodities.\u00a0 Above all, I want to shake this feeling of being a failure and be content with being me whatever that may be as opposed to trying to be what I think other people believe I should be.\u00a0 I have a long way to go before this dark night becomes welcome dawn.<\/p>\n
Monk Anchorwind – Early to Mid May 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Diary: The Dark Night of the Soul I’ve been under the weather lately.\u00a0 In our current circumstance, it could have meant any number of things from momentary to permanent.\u00a0 Yesterday, I spent the day watching a cooking show and eating a simple bowl of beans and rice.\u00a0 I stayed away from the business of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[304],"tags":[291,317,32],"class_list":["post-27482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dear-diary","tag-291","tag-identity","tag-self"],"yoast_head":"\n