I don’t exactly know what to say because I still don’t really know what happened to me. The medical profession call it ‘a major depressive episode’ but I’ve been knocked sideways by a multitude of feelings, not just depression but agitation, anxiety, terror, panic, grief, desperation, despair and an almost irresistible desire to be dead and it’s gone on for a very long time. Every day for six solid months I’ve had to try really hard to stay alive. I’ve literally got through each day hour by hour, trying to hang on until the sun set and it was time to close the shutters on the windows and then I’d feel, Okay I’ve survived another day. It was such a horrible winter and it felt like it went on forever, but when the clocks went forward I felt even worse because then there was an extra hour of daylight to last through. I know I’ll be criticised for saying all this, I know it sounds horribly selfish, when life is such a precious gift and many people desperately want to be alive and are denied it, but honestly, I’ve had no control over it.
Kiva was born of the following beliefs:
People are by nature generous, and will help others if given the opportunity to do so in a transparent, accountable way.
The poor are highly motivated and can be very successful when given an opportunity.
By connecting people we can create relationships beyond financial transactions, and build a global community expressing support and encouragement of one another.
Kiva promotes:
Dignity: Kiva encourages partnership relationships as opposed to benefactor relationships. Partnership relationships are characterized by mutual dignity and
respect.
Accountability: Loans encourage more accountability than donations where repayment is not expected.
Transparency: The Kiva website is an open platform where communication can flow freely around the world.
As of November 2009, Kiva has facilitated over $100 million in loans.
1 Million Women - A campaign of daughters, mothers, sisters and grandmothers
- Committed to protecting our climate, our communities and our future, leading
change for the better.
Our goal is to inspire 1 million Australian women to take practical action on climate change by cutting 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse pollutant causing global warming.
Every woman who joins has a personal goal to cut 1 tonne of CO2 from their daily lives within a year of joining the campaign.
Here on our 1 Million Women website you'll be guided through ways to cut your 1 tonne, and to track your progress as you go along. You don't have to be an expert on climate change. Just join up and we'll guide you every step of the way.
1 Million Women - a million tonnes of CO2. It's a huge challenge.
With your help we will make it happen.
Me, with the mezzo-soprano soloist, Ellen Malone.
A silly moment in the dressing room!
At the after party! My lovely Lucinda, with myself and Dan.
My dear amigos, happy new year to you all and I hope your festive season was not too unpleasant. I’m very sorry but this is going to be a very short piece because I am laid low with crippling depression. Regular readers know that I’ve been prone to depression on and off over the years but this is in a totally different league. This is much much worse. I know I’m leaving myself open to stinky journalists saying ‘What has she got to be depressed about, the self-indulgent whiner, when there are people out there with real troubles?’ so I won’t go on about it.
All I will say is that I’m aware that these are terrible times and that there are people out there who have been so ruined by the current economic climate that they’ve lost the roof over their heads and every day is a battle for basic survival and I wish I could make their pain go away. But although I’m blessed enough to have a roof over my head, I still feel like I’m living in hell. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t write, I can’t read, I can’t talk to people. The worst thing is that I feel it will never end. I know lots of people don’t believe it, but depression is an illness, but unlike say, a broken leg, you don’t know when it’ll get better.
I’ve been trying to read helpful, comforting and inspiring bits and pieces because I can’t manage novels and I’ve included some of them at the bottom of the page, in the hope that you might find them helpful, comforting and inspiring at some time too.
So amigos, I’m sorry to abandon you for the moment. Full service will be restored at some stage, I hope. Thank you in advance for your kindness because you’ve always been so lovely to me and once again Happy New Year. I hope it’s a nice one for you.
***
That’s the thing about depression. A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.
Elizabeth Wurtzel Prozac Nation
***
Believe more deeply. Hold your face up to the light, even though for the moment you do not see.
Bill Wilson, in a letter 1950 in How Bill Sees It
***
Why allow salt water to rust your heart
When the world is brimming with pure sweet water
Rumi
***
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
© Mary Oliver.
***
There is a crack, a crack in everything. It’s how the light gets in
L Cohen
***
This too shall pass
AA slogan
***
And did you get what
You wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
Beloved on the earth
Raymond Carver, Late Fragment
***
Razors pain you; Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give;
Gas smells awful; You might as well live.
Resume by Dorothy Parker
***
The mind is its own place and in itself can make heaven of hell and a hell of heaven.
John Milton
***
Just for today
AA slogan
***
I am the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be a cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell; I awfully forbode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better.
Abraham Lincoln
***
Be Ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.
You’ve been stony for too many years. Try something different.
Surrender.
Rumi from A Necessary Autumn Inside Each
***
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.
CS Lewis
***
Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.
CS Lewis
***
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in getting up every time that you do
Confucius, Chinese philosopher and reformer
***
Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
Chapter 1
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
Chapter 2
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend that I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter 3
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit … but, my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
Chapter 4
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
Chapter 5
I walk down another street.
Portia Nelson’s “There’s A Hole In My Sidewalk“
***
To be or not to be: that is the question
Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing, end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep we say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
The flesh is heir to, tis a consummation
devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep.
Hamlet (3/1)
***
God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change
Courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference
Reinhold Niebuhr
***
Holly Golightly: You know the days when you get the mean reds?
Paul Varjak: The mean reds. You mean like the blues?
Holly Golightly: No. The blues are because you’re getting fat, and maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re just sad, that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid, and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?
Breakfast at Tiffanys by Truman Capote
***
I have studiously tried to avoid ever using the word ‘madness’ to describe my condition. Now and again, the word slips out, but I hate it. ‘Madness’ is too glamourous a term to convey what happens to most people who are losing their minds. That word is too exciting, too literary, too interesting in its connotions to convey to bordeom, the slowness, the dreariness, the dampness of depression.
Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
***
Nobody tells me. Nobody keeps me informed. I make it 17 days come Friday since anybody spoke to me
Eeyore, The house at Pooh Corner by AA Milne
***
I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, master Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened. But in the end it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Master Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Sam, The Two Towers, Lord of the Rings
***
My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?
Christ on the cross (even though he knew he wasn’t actually forsaken at all…)
***
If you are going through hell, keep going
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