I don’t know if it’s the awful weather, or the echoing, empty aftermath of last week’s End of School celebrations, but I’m sad and not entirely myself this week. I know, you say: I’m always sad. Well, I’m actually not. I’m sensitive, yes, prone to waves of sorrow, but they are, on a regular day, interspersed with rushes of joy and wonder of an equal intensity. This week, though, it’s mostly grief I feel, alongside the odd, crawling-out-of-my-own-skin anxiety that sometimes overtakes me, preoccupying me as completely as a leg full of itchy bug bites or a grain of sand in my eye.
Do you know this feeling? There are days when I’m so impatient, so utterly aggravated with every single thing – and person – in my life that I can’t even stand myself. I slam on the brakes at red lights, am annoyed with everything anyone says, and find myself snappish. I’m also forgetful, even less coordinated than usual: driving to the wrong destination, stubbing my toe on things, walking into rooms and not knowing why I’m there.
I feel a frantic discomfort, as though I literally want to climb out of the container of my own life. As if I cannot bear another single moment inside my body. All of the rushing and distraction is just, I know, a desperate effort not to be present, not to really look and see. What I don’t know is why it is so insufferably difficult for me to do that, to be here, right now. I try to remind myself that my intense agitation comes from a deep well of sadness. That its source is the swirling darkness that exists always inside me, swelling, sometimes, so that I cannot think of anything else.
Despite my being a Leo, born in the year of the tiger, and in posession of defiantly sunny hair, I’ve always felt distinctly not-feline and not-sunny. I’m more like the moon, I think. Surely my pulse thrums in some kind of mysterious accord with the tides. And I inhabit a dense, mostly dark place, speckled with blindingly bright stars. This week, then, I’ve been on the dark side of my moon.
Yes, I do know – and as usual, you are expressing it in an exquisitely precise way.
I don’t live there anymore, though, and I wish I could tell you why in a straightforward way, but I don’t remember the road well enough to map it for you. I do know it has a lot to do with being right here, right now. You are right about that.
And there must be something going on. There us definitely a restlessness, a sense of overall anxiety, a lack of peace in the air right now. You are not alone.
Love to you.
I love how you can take what I regard as a “funk” and explain it eloquently… or at all! I know days like these, I can’t sit still, can’t pick a direction, an activity. So instead I ping back and forth, not settling, not enjoying even the “fun” things I might try to use to bait my happiness to return. Nothing ever works. I’ve started to think it’s not meant to. Perhaps being gifted the highs we are we must pay some price on the other end. Not as punishment, simply as a way of balancing things. Like the tides themselves… 🙂
One day I woke up feeling like this and moved my whole family to France. Then I realized this was a temporal, life-cycle feeling that would not be assuaged by a geography cure.
I don’t know what to tell you, other than to say that we all go there, if we are blessed to live long enough, and if we let ourselves feel and admit those feelings. And walking through this time (or stumbling, or crawling) gets you greater perspective, and patience, and depth of field.
You wouldn’t want your kids never to struggle, because then they would not grow. Love yourself the same way.
I relate to so much of this and I commend you, as always, for being real, for exploring life’s grays. The dark side is as much who we are as the sunshine… Hope the swelling sadness abates and soon. xox
oh yes, i know this feeling…which inhabits me often. i too feel the paradoxical sun/moon pull (a leo introvert)…and the moon’s reign (which calls me to the ocean for its grace).
Being able to write about the dark side of your own moon – something we all experience – seems to be no small act of grace. May the sun find you.
Full Strawberry Moon eclipse last night. You’re right on schedule 🙂
I went back and read the post you linked to about how you needed to learn to be here now, and live your life now (because it’s happening!). I know the feeling . . . and I am trying to be in the present, to not put things (or emotions) off because I’m waiting for ‘something.’ You’re right, this is it, right here right now. Thanks for the reminder.
It is not surprising that the feminine is connected to the moon. Yes, its tides and rhythms; but more, it’s constancy, it’s always-ness, its unwillingness to turn its face from scorching brightness and penetrating heat.
The moon just stays.
And you, dear Lindsey, do the same – in the intensity of day and the dark of night, in a safe and comforting space and crawling out of your skin, in sadness and joy.
Not either/or. Always both/and. Ambivalence. The moon invites us there – and just stays. So do you.
Thank you.
for anyone at odds or out of touch with their body: try checking out the tips in this post. really simple, quick and very useful… http://ca.mg1.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.rand=2ma3h84esf9i4#
i refuse to let the irritation, the ugliness take hold of me anymore. so i do the mindful meditation, observe those useless, debilitating emotions, acknowledge them but don’t engage with them, let them go and focus on the positive ones (which i also feel but they get swamped if i indulge in the negative ones). almost everyone i know says it isn’t possible for them, they can’t do it, etc. but i lived in that misery for 20 some years and one day i said no more. it took an enormous amount of will and loads of practice but i almost never get caught up in the annoyance and irritation and ugliness of the dark side of my moon now. the sadness… now that’s another story. vicki 🙂
Beautiful post, Lindsey. A friend of mine turned me on to your blog recently and since that time, I have come to anticipate a new entry each day. Upbeat, sad, or otherwise, your words are honest and real. I always tell myself that the most important aspect of those sad and lonely feelings is the ability to recognize their existence, which you have so eloquently done.
I get this. Thanks for this raw portrayal of your emotions. You always speak in ways that the reader can relate. That is a gift. Hope the swelling of sadness lessens in the upcoming week.
oh of course you are sad. The challenge of summer, the change in routine, the stress of work without the school hours to get it done.
be patient with yourself and give yourself time to settle into summer. It will get easier.
I know the anxiety well. I live the with some strange sense of urgency and fear and disappointment. You are not alone! Xoxo
Yes, me too – only you write about it so much more eloquently than I do. In fact I haven’t posted in a awhile because I feel like I just can’t find the words to explain it. Another commenter said it best I think, coming into summer – while we love it and revel in it, especially here in the Northeast, it is still a transition and transitions can be tough, especially for those of us experiencing the dark side of the moon. 😉 I love your blog!
So resonant with my being this post. I feel invited to remember to dance beneath the moon when it calls me into the darkness. Your eloquent truth and honesty empower me to allow my own swells of feeling to fill me and lay back in them for a bit before moving forward.
THANK YOU