gluten-free

Thank you...for listening and for offering sanctuary.  It is also very quiet here...but the biggest thing is always work.  I must be a responsible adult and keep plugging away to pay bills and provide a home.

I know I am different this time.  I have been thinking about all we have exchanged here...actually, I am thinking.  Many times in the past I have felt like a big blank stare.  I am thinking about Grandma a lot, and her quiet, willing servitude.  I wonder if she was depressed for the whole time we knew her.  She never talked about much, except to worry.  She was always worried.  And she worried a lot about our (her grandchildren) lack of religion.  Otherwise I remember her as being quietly alert, waiting to help, to offer.

I am thinking about my mother-in-law who also struggled with depression and who tried so hard to control everything.  Every detail had to look good, but I think it kept her so busy that she didn't have to feel.

There seem to be two ways to deal - either go into control-mode or allow one's self to be battered and tossed and then see where it ends.  I always thought S#3 and I were here - in the no control group.  Maybe Grandma, too.  Bad stuff happens, we tuck and roll with it, then when it's over we check to see how much has survived.  I think these modes determine whether we feel the world makes no sense and nothing we do matters and so we eat to numb and disappear inside of ourselves, or if we fight back, and try to take control and starve to numb and use control to create the illusion of normalcy...

I want to talk to my daughter, but she won't sit still.  She is moving constantly.  She told me that when she tries to relax, her internal voice starts to dramatize everything, she feels like things will never be okay and she just winds tighter and ends in a tenser and tenser place.  So she goes to work, she goes to friends, she has people over - she never wants to be quiet and alone.  I understand...and I am waiting for my moment.

And I wonder if any of are normal.  If there is any hope for us.  This is so hard.....(yeah, I know, I retracted normal months ago...are we healthy?  Better questions because there are levels of healthy!)

The logical part of myself wonders if the fact that I have not had any gluten since Tuesday is part of the reason I am sinking into the canyon.  I know the chocolate was a bad idea, and it is gone now.  I am depriving myself of the easiest numbing agents in my arsenal of protection.  Is this withdrawal?  And I remember you saying we can't use willpower to give up our addictions...so, I am gambling.  Has our exploration of our pain been freeing enough for me to forego my wheat fix?

I have made one other change.  I have begun doing yoga.  I practiced a lot when I was in college - several hours per day several days per week.  After the dream about running, and the thought,  "Oh, this is what it feels like..." I have been trying to remember what it feels like to be flexible and centered and strong.  I was going through some postures, consciously trying to remember, and realized that I felt that cold, blank depression for much of my adolescence.  Damn, I remember.  This is leading me to redefine my history...

This is not easy......................................................................................Clare

PS...Ready to sign out when I heard a commotion.  My guitar tipped part way over.  I checked and realized my cat is torturing a mouse.  I want her to get rid of them all, I just don't want to see it. I looked at the mouse and thought of prey.  That is my reaction - it is of a prey animal.  I relax into the pain and wait for the inevitable.