Miserable

I'm forcing myself to function half-heartedly at work (it will be interesting to see what my stats are for the month of November---these anti-depressants turning me into a pale, unresponsive ghost of myself).  I'm barely eating in an attempt to keep my digestive system from seizing up on me.  But I feel like I am having a month long bout with the flu---weak and sick, lethargic and unmotivated to do much more than function.  I am glad now that I don't have a job that demands a lot of me, for when I am faced with anything that forces me to think or act enrgetically, I know that I don't have the resources to muster for the job, and just collapse.  It makes me feel compassion for the people that I know are truly depressed---like a co-worker on my team.  I'm still convinced that the majority of people on anti-depressants are just legal addicts.  In a way, I have more respect for alcoholics or heroin addicts---at least they know they are addicts, and there's nothing legitimate, or "medical" about dependency.  But we are a society of addicts---primarily, I believe, because our deepest, truest need---that of awareness of and relationship with the realm of the spiritual---is not met.  Churches surely don't meet that need; they have become one of the biggest purveyors of addiction, not only in this country, but in the world.  Unfortunately, while addictive religion may have had positive ramifications in the past, I see it as the single most destructive collectivizing force in the world today.

I'm trying to keep my joy that I lost three weeks ago, when my thyroid medications were replaced with chemically addictive drugs whose sole purpose was to depress and de-energize me.  I try to think what positive I can take from this, and renewed contempt for Western medicine is certainly one.  It is hard when the person I live with thinks joy is a manifestation of out of control mania.  I noticed how much it disturbed her when I woke up singing.  Well, I won't be singing for a while. I also know that I cannot express myself around her fully so I put on my best "mask"--acceptable, quiet, suppressed and repressed---be a good little Christian girl.  Of course I know this is going to get to her, but I don't care.  I'm tired of not being able to express myself; besides there is no joy living with someone who I cannot be my naturally exuberant, bodacious self.  I guess the biggest difference between us is best encapsulated in the people we are attracted to.  She is attracted to a 400 pound man who told her he wouldn't want to have sex because he was afraid of a heart attack; he uses oxygen to masturbate.  I, on the other hand, know that sex and love is about going out of yourself and sacrifice, not protecting the flesh.   That is such a blasphemous denial of life and love.   That is why I have made the choices I've made; too bad, I've got a religious Taliban from preventing me from living out my choices.  But my life won't be full or complete until I'm with the woman I love.  Nor (and this comes from God with whom I've talked about it many times), will true healing over my childhood abuse come about until I am with her.  So, in the meantime, I just try to function, sometimes more successfully than others.  Right now, admittedly, it is very hard.  But I  will make my choices to the extent that I am able.  I would rather suffer sickness and debility from the lack of my thyroid medication than suffer mental and emotional devitalization and physical poison from anti-depressants.  I dreamed about three weeks (right before they swapped out my meds, and I knew that it was an ominous dream), that I was going to go to jail again, but I had a choice--I could have my hands tied behind me, or in front.  Well I choose in front.  I interpreted the dream to mean that I was entering a period of constricted repression and suffering (and boy was I right), but at least I have some freedom of movement.  I choose to suffer my way; not theirs.

Last night I had an important "self" dream with an old VIDA buddy of mine--"Kathleen."  I always remember Kathleeen's comment about the SLI.  She was a very mature, measured, calm woman, and one day on a trip back from the monastery.  All of us twentysomething VIDA's were excitedly commenting on how sexist the SLI was in regard to women, and how they did this, that, and the other.  Finally, Kathleen, who was quiet as always, responded to our question for comment--she said, "they are kept women."  Because she never made rash or emotional judgments, that statement had more force than all our excited proclamations put together.  Glenna broke the profound stillness by exclaiming, "that's why I'm uncomfortable there.  I'm an unkept woman."  We all laughed.  Thank you, God, for unkept women.  They are what keeps the world truly alive and joyful---make life worth living.  Anyway, I dreamed I went to talk to Kathleen who was living by herself in the woods, and in the dream I got the impression that though the SLI was nearby, she was resolutely independent of them (Kathleen was to make an extended retreat there later, but though she was desperately seeking a religious community, that place was not for her.  She was too intelligent, motivated, and gifted of a woman to ever be a "kept" member of McNamara's harem.  But in the dream she offered me coffee (weak) after I got hot water from a stream, and offered me to read three books that she had on Tibetan Buddhism (when I think of TB, I think of discernment of the spirits---they are very in touch with the fact that the spiritual has both divine and demonic elements, and that the two, while different,  are both somehow legitimate or valid).  She had parked her car nearby, and someone came and told her that it had been towed uphill (why, I don't know).  But the upshot was to make her life harder, even though she already was living a very elemental life in the woods.

Here comes the stomach pain....I just ate.