Cross Roads

Bleugh. The feeling before the day starts, before I have to weave my way between jobs and new things. Bleugh.

I have felt depressed on and off throughout my life. My anxieties can feel like a steam pipe with no
safety valve, whereas other times I feel that luck or some good force thrills me on to great heights.

My emotions are so textured by physical sensations and yet so often I fail to take note of the way  the body is not only symptomatically revealing the brain and the emotions but is simultaneously impacting the emotions.

Yesterday afternoon I saw my fiancée's godson and her best friend. In speaking to a person I like but don't know so well, and in playing and smiling with this 2 year old, this kind and very simple person I came away so positive and relaxed. I felt tired but in a good way. Not driven into knots but just tired after exertion and play.

I liked Catholicism for a long time. It fit me for different reasons. It allowed me to channel my love of history (the passage of time, the way one's personal actions have ramifications down the generations), my love of people (spending time with one another in a purposeful community), my love of reflection and solitude (finding peace in purposeful thought - prayer -, helping others, having routine, and in moments of gratitude). However it also exacerbated and made more deeply riven feelings of compulsion (I have to act a certain way or I would lose God, or at least connection with Him which is as good as), of responsibility (after my friend's suicide it made me think I should have saved him), of guilt (if I didn't feel peaceful I thought I'd lost God, so would descend into spirals of damning thoughts after a wank or anything really), and of over-thinking (I lost my appreciation of the joy of simply being).

I have felt at a cross-roads for a little while now. How do I confidently step into the future with so much sadness weighing me down? How do I function if I cannot stop my mind from overthinking? How does my mind have direction if I haven't crystallized a core essence of purpose and understanding of life? These existential questions then run in with the more immediate and personal: what job and career shall I do? One that makes me fulfilled and fits my remit of skills? How much does this one career define my life and its purpose?

I believe I am growing. I went from self vain-glory, to exploration of the mind through highs and then to the idealism of spirituality, then into the self-confidence of religion, and now I feel once again stripped. But to be stripped back is a good place for renewed growth. I feel I understand myself better than ever even if right now I feel sad a lot and lacking energy.

I believe positive steps are necessary and just around the bend. Work on the body and its symptoms and then the mind will be more positive to tackle its problems.