Potato Nose Diaries (nothing has really changed since I started my Potato Nose Diaries when I was 14 going on 15)
July 22, 2021
Dear me,
This is my S.A.D. time. Seasonal Affective Disorder is not about winter and sun lamps for me. I struggle in the summer with sunshine and these inevitable depressions. The low mood cycle has been particularly hard this past while. I am finding it hard to focus. There is energy, yet there is none. There is the need to nap, yet the 5:30 AM wake ups. And there is that perseverating-indulgent-self-hatred-cheese-grater running along the inside of my heart chambers.
I have tools in the toolbox, but the toolbox is too hard to lift today. I am, however, better than the worst of it back in ____, when walking over Burrard Street Bridge was a bit of a terror- Keep walking. Just keep walking. I promised myself back then, to always keep walking.
There is an intoxicating self-indulgence in allowing myself to whine here. This is my space. I am allowed to write what I want. Express what I want. But why write it though? I try to be perfect and that is where my failure is. I try to do the best I can, to get it right, to be able to be on my death bed and look back and say, I got it right. Oh, Nina, that is a toxic-self-important-aggrandizing-useless-indulgence of a goal.
To lie on my death bed and simply say thank you – that is the hope. That is the doable.
Who are you, Nina, to think there is such a thing as perfect? That there is such a thing as control?
Stand tall in your uniqueness, your glorious aloneness.
Know that the last chapter of your life – how long? how short? – should, no, could be one of freedom. Put down the luggage, the book-filled tote bags, the memories. Step forward into you-time. That is not negative self-indulgence. Don’t you get that? What is negative self-indulgence is your gall to think that you are not worthy of the life you live. How dare you not embrace the gift fully while that raw heart still beats.
As I let these words tumble out in all their unnecessary order and expression, with no thought, the spirit lifts a bit. The raw walls of my heart chambers sting less. Ah, look what you just did, Nina. You used a tool. Good old journaling. Write it out. And lighten up.
Stand tall? I look to my left at an old geranium cutting that I tenaciously have tried to save. It grows, but in the “wrong direction,” curling down and around the mason jar, not up towards the sun. Me too, sweetie.