Can it be that someday
I will long for today?
Wish these days back again –
even this sad day?
Can it be?
Do you have days when you feel like this, too?
Can It Be?
Tag: Depression
On Hues of Blues
I checked out the Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning: How Green Is Blue. If this is some expression in common use today, I’ll admit that I’m rather uncommon and have never heard of it. At any rate, I was struck by the unusualness of it.
But wait…is unusualness actually a word? My word processing programme accepts it but the built-in Word Press spell-checker highlights it as an error. (It highlights programme as an error, too, but I’m using Canadian English today.)
I slid my mouse over to the Merriam-Webster site and they list unusualness as the noun, with the adjective being unusual, though its awkwardness does cause my mind to stumble a bit. STUMBLE is the Word of the Day prompt word this morning.
For the word unusual M-W offers alternatives like unique, off-beat, curious, odd, peculiar. If you want another word for your tongue to stumble over, try chromaticity, which is “the quality of color characterized by its dominant or complementary wavelength and purity taken together.”
In The Eyes Of The Beholder
The hues of blues are a common debate at our house: my beloved sees every blue-green shade from aqua to turquoise as green, while I call it blue. For example, is this fence blue and the sign green? Are they both green? Or both blue?
Likewise, are these ducks swimming in green water or blue?
The Colour of Emotions
It’s interesting how, in English, certain colours have become attached to emotions. A blue sky is always a sunny, cheerful one. Not so with a blue day or a blue mood, which rather suggests depression. It could be that people were green with envy long before Shakespeare came along, but his use of “green-eyed jealously” forever sealed the colour and the feeling in the Anglo mind.
Thus if you say, “How green is blue?” folks may hear, “How much sadness is caused by jealously?” Knowing someone has what you want, or that others have so much more than you do, can get you down if you focus there. Human as we are, envy does cause us to stumble at times as we go through life.
Asking, “How blue is green?” could be interpreted as, “She’s depressed and that’s why she’s looking at others and thinking they are so much better off.” Sad to say, when a person’s depressed they are usually inclined to see “everybody else” as upbeat, prosperous, and content with life. Other sad, lonely, desperate folks tend to fall below their radar.
And now I’ve exhausted my thoughts on this topic and shall wish you all a day in the pink.
I Saw Myself
I haven’t done any writing prompts for awhile, but when I read this one — Prosery #2 at dverse poets — it connected in my mind with one character in a story I just finished, and also called to mind a real-life situation I once observed. Sadly, some people just can’t be loved out of their bitterness.
So I’m going to try working “I dreamt I was the moon” into a 144-word story.
I Saw Myself
I saw myself as the sun, drawing you into the light. I dreamt I was the moon, touching your emotions, awakening your desire to love. I imagined myself your guiding star toward a richer life.
I believed all your excuses, furious with those who’d wronged you. But instead of drawing you into the sunshine I was sucked into your gloom, not understanding how impenetrable — how willful — your darkness.
Hooked on you, I gave and gave…until our relationship broke me and I became just another burnt-out star in your black hole. I never foresaw the pain, the frustration…or that you’d leave so much darkness in me.
My father says, “Good thing he’s finally gone.” My mother sighs. “Now maybe you can start enjoying life.”
But I’ve been in the darkness for so long; it may take ages for my light to brighten again.
Air Castle
another air castle
explodes in frigid rain
sand bank swept away
Of Downfalls and Updrafts
The young woman rushed along the street in a fit of desperate emotion. Life was over for her! What dreadful future predictions played out in her mind as she headed for the Clifton bridge? Was the weather as dismal as Sarah’s spirits that day? Surely you wouldn’t start out in the bright sunshine to fling yourself off a bridge?
Yet that’s exactly what Sarah was about to do. She’d just received a letter from her fiancé breaking their engagement. She’d never hold her head up again. Back in 1885 this rejection would have seemed like the end of the world to the heart-broken young miss and she was going to end it all. Leave all the heartaches of Earth behind.
A nagging voice in her head — we all know it, that voice of “all hope lost” — drove her on. “Love is lost forever. There’s nothing ahead for you but a long and dreary spinsterhood. You can’t live without him. And the shame! Jump, by all means. Jump.”
Sarah walked onto the bridge and looked down through her tears to where the river wound through the gorge 245 feet below. Another wave of despair swept over her and she climbed over the railings and onto the parapet. One last sob and she leaped into the emptiness.
But air isn’t empty. And in this case a draft of wind, coupled with her volumnious petticoats, considerably impeded her descent. To Sarah, the fall must have felt like slow motion, as the wind caught and swelled her wide skirt and crinoline. Down she drifted, not into the water below, but onto the riverbank where she sank deep into the soft mud that prevented her serious injury.
Astounded watchers below rushed to the spot and pulled her out, shocked but unharmed.
Sarah later married and lived to be 85.
Wikki tells us:
Sarah Ann Henley was a barmaid from Easton, Bristol, who became famous in 1885 for surviving an attempted suicide by jumping from the Clifton Suspension Bridge, a fall of almost 75 metres.
And poet William E. Heasell wrote a verse about the event:
An Early Parachute Descent in Bristol
Once in Victoria’s golden age
When crinolines were all the rage
A dame in fashionable attire
Would change her life for one up higher
So up to Clifton Bridge she went
And made a parachute descent
But though, ’twas not the lady’s wish
A boatman hooked her like a fish
And thus a slave to fashion’s laws
Was snatched from out of Death’s hungry jaws
This story’s true I’d have you know
And thus it only goes to show.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My response to today’s writing prompts:
Fandango: LEAVE
Word of the Day: DISMAL
Ragtag Daily Prompt: WALK
A Cloud of Oppression
I was lost in a dark cloud one day years ago. As I thought of the future, the scene looked so bleak. I thought of my brothers and sisters in the Lord – and of myself as well – how full of faults we all tended to be. Yes, we wanted to follow Jesus’ teachings, but temptations came and we so often had to confess that we’d entertained thoughts, said words, done things a Christian shouldn’t. If our lives up to this point had been so full of failings, how could the future hold any hope for better things?
I had many ideals of Christian life and behaviour that I couldn’t seem to live up to — and neither could others. But lowering my standards didn’t feel like the right answer, either. God does hold us to a perfect standard. We can’t say, “If we’re mostly good, the rest will get by.” I couldn’t pass off my failings with, “Oh, well, I’m just human.” The Lord asks us to obey his direction. When we don’t, we are doing wrong.
But I am so human! We all are. Often we don’t fail a little, either; we fail Big Time. Someone does something that irritates us and we tell that person off in no uncertain terms. We forget that “Charity is patient and is kind, thinks no evil, hopes all things, endures all things…”
We want — may even take — things that aren’t ours and violate the “Thou shalt not covet.” The Apostle John wrote, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world…” Next thing I know, here I am, wanting stuff again. I see my Christian sisters wanting stuff, too. God says “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” and here I am skirting around the truth to avoid criticism for something I said or did.
That day, as I viewed my own past track record – and that of others in our church – the dark cloud towered over me, suffocating me in despair.
My husband and I were driving to a neighbouring town to do some business so I began to tell him how I was feeling. As I was explaining, a little voice dropped a clear thought into my mind: “Your problem isn’t with the past, it’s with an evil spirit.”
One of those falling diamonds from heaven that clunks you on the head when it lands — and makes perfect sense when you examine it. This thought pierced that dark cloud like a laser beam, blasting it to pieces.
I immediately repeated the thought to my husband and something amazing happened. It’s like my eyes were opened and I could see it so clearly. This “blue mood” was actually a tormenting spirit. It would come to me every time my thoughts went back to the past, and it highlighted all my imperfections. It shadowed every thing I’d done with dark tones of failure – which was why I had a hard time thinking about the past at all without getting depressed.
As soon as I recognized it for what it was, it was gone! That whole dark shadow was gone and I could look at the past in a brighter light. Things were not nearly as bad as I had been seeing them. Why, we had all behaved as normal people! Sure, we had failed, but the blood of Christ covers all our failings. God forgives us, not because we’re improving with time, but because His Son paid the price to redeem us.
I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve wandered into that same dark cloud and felt that oppression. I’ve heard again that voice lamenting the blackness of my sins and/or the errors of other Christians. I’ve tried to fight it myself, to pull myself out of that mood, but positive thinking never gets me very far. Thankfully the voice of the Holy Spirit reminds me that I can be forgiven; I don’t have to let myself be browbeaten by those accusations.
Over time the only effective solution I’ve found is to cry out to God for help. “This spirit is tormenting me again, Lord. Please make it go away.” It’s amazing how those dark tones can be zapped and life can become bright and cheerful again. So many times He sends me a thought, a verse, a song, that lifts me out of the sea of despair and sets me on the right path again. Praise the Lord!
“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God…”
—I John 4:1
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
—Ephesians 6:12
“Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”
—Hebrews 4:14-16
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