The Blackness

Sometimes it creeps up on me suddenly. Like tonight. All day (short as it’s been, having slept through nearly all the daylight hours) I have been in good spirits. Reading with the kiddo. Talking about theology with mom, and then later, philosophy with the hub. Cleaning with the hub and the sub and making major progress on the bedroom, which always feels good. Feeling productive. Feeling proactive. Feeling content, or very close to such an elusive state.

Then I just dropped like a ton of bricks. No warning. No trigger. No reason. Just shoom, and the elevator plummets ten floors.

I feel hopeless. I am watching the money for my retreat get eaten away bit by bit, until now it’s almost gone. The last of the money from my business, going into the gas tank and to the electric company, and not into something that would have renewed me and at least felt like a worthwhile thing to get out of such a tremendous loss (financially and emotionally). I feel so cheated by the entire situation, and the retreat felt like something that, if it came about because of the end of my business, would allow me to walk away from it feeling that I’d been more than paid in full, and move forward.

I’m not giving up on the retreat. But it is at least temporarily postponed, and I’m terrified that the time in between will turn into complacency. I wanted to use the retreat to set my course, and now I feel I’m adrift at sea, each day leaving me subject to getting caught up in the currents. Currents have carried me far too long.

The retreat was to drop anchor. What do you do when you have to wait indefinitely to anchor yourself?

“Where there is no hope, it is incumbent upon us to invent it.” – Albert Camus