The years of unemployment shook my faith in myself. I got lots of support on my blog but I was also attacked. If you choose to write in public you need to be able to process stuff like that.
I lost a few friends. To some extent I have processed all of it. In other ways I might might never let the hurt go.
I'm sad. And I'm embarrassed to be sad. Sadness feels like failure.
There are reasons. Sadness seems a normal thing to feel all things considered. But I haven't wanted to talk about it.
Sadness is difficult for people, especially when they care about you. And the myriad ways in which people deal with those feelings are all understandable.
But. I can't process my own sadness and other people's need for me to not be sad. So I am withdrawn.
The problem is that I am cut off from my inner world.
I heard Parker Palmer talk abut his own depression. He used the phrase: the tragic gap.

"The tragic gap is the gap between what's really going on around us, the hard conditions in which our lives are currently immersed, and what we know to be possible from our own experience"

He goes on to describe flips between hyper-cynicism and hyper-idealism with such elegance. I listen to the interview again and again trying to ground myself in the wisdom. But wisdom ... wisdom doesn't always help.

So I had a weepy weekend but I got a few chores done. I'm not really ready for Monday. Ready or not. Here we go.