It's been prempted by some yucky feelings. Bit of self-loathing going on and a bit of soul-mining, which can always be a little painful. I consider this when I look at an open-cut mining operation and think 'surely this hurts Mumma Earth?'. Just laying bare the layers and exposing them to the elements...things are going to get blown away as dust and detritus...obviously.
This morning after a relatively normal night of sleep-wake-sleep-shuffle-sleep and then the pitch *down* into the subconscious, I found myself having the most purgative experience.
I was in a kind of meeting place, where my children were 'off' with someone else, or a group of kids doing some activity. It felt like a municipal building...like a library with a 'kids play room' or 'facility for learning activities' (or other such inane name for and inside learning place). The decor was dark, royal blue carpet, 'panels' for walls and that aluminium stripping on the connections. Doors with glass inclusions so no-one can do anything without being watched...that kind of place.
I was very, very sad. Not the sort of depression that is from dysfunction or trauma, but a deep apathy, a soul-wrenching ache and a longing to be free of it. I wasn't usually like this, I was angry at this moment.
A lady walked up to me and said "Well, she's like this because you never TAKE her to the Yeronga centre, and she never gets to be with....", she'd kept talking but I'd just put my hands over my ears and began to weep while walking swiftly away. (Yeronga is a suburb in Brisbane where there are colleges and schools, and maybe I've associated this with 'corrective learning')
Then *zip*, and I am in a circle group setting. Other parents are lighting a pizza topped with oil and making the flame go around on top of it to the delight of the kids and adults. All this frivolity and 'learning' about flammability...chemical reactions...oooh the technology... yet I am sitting in the corner so deflated. I am a person who has no air. I am a mother without her children around her. I can't see them. I can't feel them. I can't even sense where they are. My eyes weep tears and I have no control over it. I can't smile I can't even muster a smile or a mask. I am laid bare. Open to the elements around me.
My gaze travels around the group and I meet some concerned eyes, and one woman with dark hair and the sort of face you meet in counselling sessions grabs my focus. She is full of empathy and so worried. The emotion scares the hell out of me but I don't even flinch. I move my gaze onwards and then fall back onto a pillow, weeping from my gut, wrenched out sobs that eventually wake me up.
Oh god, the utter emptiness I felt when I woke.
Near to tears for real and wondering who that sad woman was.
I sense my past and realise I've let a lot of fear go.
I used to be depressed. Clinically depressed. I used to wear a mask and it damaged me.
I used to be that poor poor woman, and she knew what you were thinking of her.
I breathe deeply and pull up the covers. Across the room my little girl shuffles and sighs. I hear my baby boy in the next room wake his Daddy up with a cranky demand and then hear the patter of feet up the hallway.
"MUM! Is morning NOW! MUM! IS MORNING now!" he says, and then snuggles in before saying, "Mummm, get out mine bed! my turn in 'ere".
Smiling, I shift myself out of his bed, and begin the day. Life is good, even if you're woken up in this manner.
