My Light Bulb Flickered "On" For A Minute There

I feel:: depressed, anxious, sad

Now is the time of the day when it gets really hard not to think about David. I feel that old, very familiar ache right in the area of the middle of my sternum. It's so pressing that sometimes it gets hard to breathe.

I have no idea what to do with this ache. It's familiar, but the ache is so much keener than it ever has been. It's like the difference between trying to cut meat with a dull knife and a sharpened one. I thought I had experienced pain before, but never anything like this.

What's weird to me is crying and not crying for myself. I don't know if that makes much sense, but it does to me. There have only been a few times in my life when my crying (freaking out) and depression hasn't been because I'd had a flashback or something/someone/someplace triggered me. Sometimes the depression wanes for a bit, but I can always feel it there just below the surface. I realized in the midst of a crying jag the other night that I wasn't in the least bit crying for myself. I was crying because I was grieving over David's death. I know that's sort of an odd time to have a revelation about oneself, but nevertheless, it happened. Somehow, that knowledge made it more ok for me to feel my own grief. I embraced it instead of trying to push it away.

I've been so upset over friends in trouble before that I've literally fallen to my knees in prayer and hysterical crying because I was afraid for them. But I knew they would live, or rather, I knew they weren't dead. God puts people on my heart at times to pray for and I wind up in tears over that, but I'm finding out that grief is a totally different animal.

It seems to me that I've always been taught to push away those "bad" emotions, but now I'm beginning to wonder if any emotions are "bad". I mean, God gave me emotions because I'm made in his image. From what I've studied in the Bible, God does indeed have emotions and does express them. So, now I'm thinking if I, instead of trying to push away negative emotions when they come, but embrace them-face them- that that might be the road to wellness for me. I have serious doubts that I'll ever be "well", but what I guess I mean is "not so sick as now". It seems to me that it's more what one does or doesn't do with whichever emotions are felt that can be either "good" or "bad".

I don't really know what I mean, I suppose. People throw the word "normal" around like it's supposed to mean something. I don't know what "normal" is. I only know what is familiar to me. I also don't really know what "abnormal" is because I only know what I see as "abnormal". It might be totally different for someone else and probably is. For me, "abnormal" is meeting someone whose parents have never been divorced, "mom" cooks dinner every night and "dad" doesn't look at his daughter like he'd rather have her for dinner than what his wife cooked.

People who seem to be what society would consider "normal" kind of freak me out. I guess because I just don't believe that every family doesn't have some sort of issue going on within it and each family member their own demons. Some families are better at hiding it than others. I don't know, maybe I'm just jaded-seen too much misery in my lifetime to believe that anyone can be truly "good". Even myself.