TheBanyanTree: Fall

[Indiglow]

Hear, hear!
J

--- On Fri, 9/23/11, Monique Colver <monique.colver at gmail.com> wrote:


From: Monique Colver <monique.colver at gmail.com>
Subject: TheBanyanTree: Fall
To: "Banyan Tree" <thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com>
Date: Friday, September 23, 2011, 10:50 AM


Fall



It hasn’t fallen quite yet, but there are signs it’s about to, and so I
wait, impatiently. I’m not a patient person under the best of circumstances,
and end of summer is not the best of circumstances. It’s hot. I don’t like
hot. I do not like the giant wolf spider that was climbing up my office wall
this week. By giant, I mean, to me. To you, it may have been tiny. But I
doubt it. It was really big. And it’s because it’s still summer. I had to
call for the guy in the next office to come over and save me. He did. He
always does. This is why my office space is called a prime location.



But enough about me. How are you? Are you faring well? Is life being easy on
you? Or is it being a giant pain in the ass? You can tell me. I won’t even
tell anyone else if you want it to be a secret. I’m good at keeping secrets.
Usually. Not always. I’m not perfect, y’know. Just don’t tell me something
so interesting or funny that I feel compelled to share.



If you’re doing well, I am happy for you. If you’re not doing well, I wish I
could change it. That’s how I am. I want to make everything better for
everyone else, but I learned years ago that trying to is an exercise in
futility. True, it may be the only exercise I get some days, but still.
(That’s because of summer. I can’t exercise when it’s this hot. Once fall
arrives I’ll have to come up with a new excuse.)



So pardon me if I don’t try to make it better. It’s not that I don’t want
to, you see, it’s just that I can’t.



What I can do is tell you it gets better. I sound like a PSA, I know. Well,
in theory it gets better. It doesn’t always, does it? I found that out for
myself. Until I realized that I was the one stopping it from getting better.
Not that this is your situation. Your situation is not your doing. But mine
was. When you take on responsibility for everything and assume the world
needs you running it, controlling it even, you can quickly find out that the
world doesn’t really care, and that if you drop out of it for a bit the
world will do just fine, thank you very much.



And when I say you, I mean me, of course.



This involved a bit of adjustment on my part. If the world didn’t need me
running it, what was my purpose? At one point I thought it was to take care
of all the mentally ill people. But it was just one mentally ill person that
I was supposed to take care of, not all of them. Fortunately I figured that
out before one of them killed me. It helps to be a fast learner, though fast
is relative.



It’s not true, despite what I learned growing up (by growing up I mean I got
bigger physically, not necessarily emotionally), that I’m useful only as
much as I can solve other people’s problems. Imagine that! And no, the world
at large doesn’t need me coming to its aid. Why? Because the world at large
doesn’t come running to my aid when I need it, and I get by just fine.



Okay, sometimes it does. And sometimes it doesn’t. But mostly it’s up to me.
My mental and emotional state is up to me, and if I choose so, I can improve
it. If that means I should take anti-depressants to keep the dark times at
bay, I do so, and I don’t feel bad for not having the self-control to make
myself “happy” without them. Yes. Some people still believe it demonstrates
superiority to not rely on these sorts of things. Fine with me. Like I said,
I’m my own problem.



Occasionally it means I must avoid being bombarded with negativity. Not that
I’m always a “be happy or be gone!” sort of person, but I do have my limits.
Especially at a time when the world itself seems to be descending into a
whirlpool of madness and sadness. When someone I barely know emails me for
help because she’s anxious and doesn’t know how to deal with life and can’t
leave the house, I tell her to seek therapy, and good luck with that, and I
wish her well. I can’t take on everyone who needs help. I used to. See where
that got me? (She is, by the way, a "be happy or be gone!" sort of person
who can only deal with happy thoughts, so there is that.)



At the end of summer I take stock of where I’m at while I ponder my next
move. I’m in pretty good shape. I’m very lucky, and the next move is up to
me. But it’s totally up to me, and if I don’t follow through, that’s me all
the way. Life is not conspiring against me.



Because this is the thing. Life conspires against all of us all the time.
It’s how life works. The only question is, what am I going to do about it?


Monique