This Matter of Faith
This Matter of Faith
  • These Matters of Faith
  • The books
    • Book I: This Matter of Faith
    • Book II: Heaven's Avenging Angels
    • Book III: No Evil
  • News
  • Historical Research
    • Fiction by other writers
  • Links
  • Contact
  • These Matters of Faith
  • The books
    • Book I: This Matter of Faith
    • Book II: Heaven's Avenging Angels
    • Book III: No Evil
  • News
  • Historical Research
    • Fiction by other writers
  • Links
  • Contact

News and Views

Monday 8th February 2016

2/8/2019

0 Comments

 
Some disappointments are minor, work-related and, viewed from a suitable distance, probably not that significant. Failing in some way is hard to take, especially when that failure has a public element to it. That is to say, the hardest part of falling short can be telling other people you've fallen short. There's also controlling that urge to chuck teddies that inevitably comes out when you feel disappointed. Perhaps I should (chuck teddies), because I don't indulge angry feelings very often, and although they can be very difficult to see clearly through, they might focus me on what to do next. Rather than just being sad and mooching, a bit of being pissed off might help me with the energy I need to not just keep on doing the same thing. I would like to apologise to anyone who catches the wrong end of me being fecked off over the next week or fortnight, because it's almost certainly the case that you didn't deserve it. It will be difficult for me to maintain that enthusiasm that I might sometimes be able to channel, but those who suffer as a result won't be those who my dummy-spitting antics are designed to affect. I don't generally set out to upset anybody, and I'm not very good at doing it deliberately, so I can imagine that there might be collateral damage.
A kind, nurturing person - which is what I, too, try to be - might have one eye on the date, and recognise its significance to me. There are those who today ought to have had that thought and didn't, and there are those who will have had that thought and couldn't or wouldn't express it for whatever reason, which might well have been as much of a wrench for them as the day has been for me. I wonder if I will be able to ask... Three years ago today I finally broke down after a period of anxiety and depression, and was unable to return to work for a month or so. There is a certain cruelty, therefore, in the lining up of that anniversary with today's disappointment, particularly as the context for that was yet another devastating, life-shaking and heartbreaking event, the unexpected death of a colleague. Baggage is some way short of expressing the idea, but it is in the right direction. My experience of the past four years (yes, you read that right, because February of the year before brought its own overwhelming grief) has been that I cry a lot more than I used to, and sometimes that's okay, and sometimes I wish I didn't have to. Crying is such a useless process, because, frankly, there is no dignity in snot. But in letting myself be sad, I've learned that the utter despair that is depression, the feeling that there is no light that can brighten the darkness, that is different. Being sad is an appropriate response to grief, to frustration, to being close enough to touch but not able to move that last inch and connect. Depression robs you of the hope that it could be different. It is a long time since I could say that I was depressed, although my anxiety has flowed as well as ebbed over four years, sometimes driven by those griefs and cares I have mentioned (and others I have not!), sometimes seemingly entirely out-of-whack with actual events. I will say this, though, to those suffering with anxiety, depression, or sadness commensurate with the situation: there will be moments, in the future, that will be happy moments. They might be sitting in front of the TV watching some nonsense with the right person. They might be getting a yes (particularly when you expected a no), or doing something you didn't think you could. But they will happen. And I am saying that as much to myself as to anyone reading this. 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Andy Richardson

    When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
    I summon up remembrance of things past,
    I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
    And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
    Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,
    For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
    And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,
    And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:
    Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
    And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
    The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
    Which I new pay as if not paid before.
    But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
    All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.

    Archives

    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018

    RSS Feed