The Fall Cycle

It's been over a month since my last post. I have many excuses: I got caught up in a bit of work-aholism (a great avoidance technique of mine), I was away at a conference for five days, I was away on rest (a topic for my next posting), and since I've been back I've been spending my time in one community meeting after another.

But there's a bigger underlying issue that's more difficult for me to express here. You know, because, maybe, sisters have images to uphold or something. And I only want to post if I can write honestly and openly, otherwise I don't have much to say.

I've been struggling with something I don't even much want my sisters to know about. So I do my best to hide it and pretend as much as possible on the surface that everything's okay. It works for awhile. Well, maybe not for as long as I'd like to be able to keep up the façade. It happens every Fall. I've become consciously aware of it in the past few years with the help of brilliant medical doctors. And I try not to give it much energy or fuel in the knowing of it now.

Yet as I have also learned to gently tune into my body's own rhythms and cadences, I feel it so well now...the chemical shifting...depression. It affects 10% of the population, mostly women and heredity does play a role.

In my bones, I sense that the reason it affects me this time of year is because this was the last trimester I was in my birthmother's womb; and I now know facts surrounding my birth. One, that she was sent far away from Salinas, CA, to New Orleans, LA, to have me and give me away. Two, that she wanted to keep me. I believe that every Fall I am chemically re-experiencing her depression and feelings of loss.

But even in the knowing of this, things still get muddled in the day to day living out of my life and my thoughts get confused and I feel at times lost and hopeless when everything on the surface looks really all right.

So I called my doctor. She had me increase the dosage of medication I'm taking. (I wasn't so pleased about this because it's main side-effect is weight gain; and I've managed to work off 20 pounds from last year's go-around with it.) I'll see her on Friday. She'll talk to me about ways we'll meet the depression head on during the next few months. It's a frustrating situation to live in sometimes. But, this is the life of someone who experiences chronic, cyclical depression. And when I'm willing to take the medications much as a diabetic is willing to take insulin, then I don't have to deal with the adverse effects of depression that I'd otherwise experience: lack of or inability to sleep, lack of appetite, mood swings, isolating myself, feeling hopeless.

And frankly, there's too many good things going on in my life right now! Visions for the future. Directions and goals being set and ready to be carried out. A lot of internal healing and growth that's been happening. This year the depressive cycle really doesn't match everything else that's going on inside or outside my monastice and active life. I want to keep my focus on these things which nourish me and give me life, and...I'll follow the doctor's orders.