Melancholy

mel·an·chol·y

noun /ˈmelənˌkälē/  A deep, pensive, and long-lasting sadness

Sometimes I think melancholy can be an addiction. A certain wistfulness can permeate every hour. I wonder if it is, in fact, a form of happiness, as the person who has this sadness clings to it against all evidence, while all around there is abundance, stacks of grace, like paddocks in summer. I spent years like that. Here my work is to learn to live with vulnerability, nose to nose with the world, unprotected by melancholy, not letting the weeds give me anything but the pleasure of the dignity of work. And to sit, from time to time, in the garden with nothing in my hand or head but pleasures.
Playing with Water, A story of a garden
Kate Llewellyn
p. 309



No, I don't actually think that I suffer from melancholy as defined on Dictionary.com. But as I read this section of Kate Llewellyn's Playing with Water, A story of a garden, I paused to consider her words.

I believe that I often (and others have affirmed my thoughts on this) mis-identify my feelings and emotions--believing that I'm possibly sinking into depression or at least too much rumination.

What is it about life experience or our busy-busy world that makes me feel guilty if I spend too many days in a row almost alone or quietly at home?

Often, I find myself saying, "I love being at home." Shouldn't that be a virtue, rather than a character deficit?

Still, too much alone time makes me want more, and then it is easier to sink into a tiny bit of melancholy.

AVOIDING

I have been avoiding writing about the primary thing on my mind these days--the future and how to get there. I am clueless as to what is next and freaking bored with the present. No work on the horizon and that is hell for a task-driven person.

ANTICIPATING...

I am the biggest waster of energy. I spend way too much time anticipating events that I can't control. Once they happen, I deal with all the stuff just fine, but in the meantime I am exhausted with the anticipation.

FORGIVENESS

God forgive me, it has taken me years to forgive my mother. Perhaps it took a couple bouts of situational depression and post-menopausal anxiety to lead me to forgiveness. I have forgiven her. I don't deny she could have done better. I don't agree with NC that she did the best she could. But, mental illness was such a conundrum in the 50s and 60s. Electro-shock treatment and talk therapy. It's such a blessing to live in this age of SSRIs and Ativan and stronger stuff I never want to know about.

And, now we accept mental illness as an illness--treatable, and we seem to be able to give grace to those who suffer. Everyone in this culture is over-stimulated, over-worked, under-loved, under-appreciated. Medication helps, it doesn't cure.

"Why can't she forgive her? Maybe in part, she thinks, because her mother's way of getting old, this retreat into ... senility, is only the exaggeration of that earlier retreat into depression or despair or whatever it was that denied responsibility or the importance of her connection to Lottie and Cameron."
For Love
by Sue Miller

"Yes my childhood may have been somewhat bad, but my parents did the best they could..." (detachment)
Whitfield, again