on feeling quite shit today
It happens to all of us. It's the human condition. It catches us unawares, drags us under, smacks us around. Leaves us feeling exposed and ugly and sad and weary.
My little mad community, my mad posse, my mad friends and I – these days we're each of us in our own ways dealing with heavy loads. The thing about madness is that it brings one's weakness right up to the surface, until it spills out and gets all over the place, on one's chin, in one's hair, sticky on one's fingers and on everything one touches. The volatility, the vulnerability, the acute loneliness of it becomes so intense that it is difficult to feel anything other than utterly shit about oneself.
So that's where today finds me. I am surrounded by beautiful other people whose madness makes them just more intriguing and more beautiful to me - and I struggle deeply to extend the same generosity to myself.
However.
The way I bring myself back into balance is this: I recall what Anne Frank taught me to do. “Look at all the beauty that surrounds you and be glad.” It really is that simple. It never fails. I learned as much on my mad travels, all those years ago now. We may look at all this surrounding beauty – the same beauty that knocks us over and leaves us breathless with our own ugliness – and find that it pushes us over the edge, to plummet downward. Deeper and deeper, into the blackest hole of despair. The trick is to let go, and allow ourselves to fall free.
We don't land hard. We don't go splat. No. Oddly and strangely and most wonderfully, we find ourselves held.
So I take a deep breath, and shake the tension out of my hands, and check in with myself. I feel... not quite so shit as I did a few minutes ago. In fact, I feel much better. I feel... held, yes... and... loved. Grateful. Beautifully messy and messily beautiful. Perfect in my imperfections. In a word: divine. And utterly, totally mad.
Photo by Ricardo Viana on Unsplash