by banned » Sun Dec 04, 2005 12:55 am
Very lonely and unable to see any happy ending for myself. Maybe it's the time of year too as we move into the darkest time, the shortest days. I have very bad SAD.<br><br>I'm not sure what purple energy is, but I am sending you some positive caring.<br><br>Remember--Frodo was not alone on the slope of Mt. Doom. We aren't alone either. Whatever it is that has kept us going is still there. We may attribute it to someone else, but the truth is, if we didn't have the survival tools we need deep inside we would have been gone a long time ago. Part of healing is making conscious contact with that "inner Samwise" who says "I can't carry it, but I can carry you!"<br><br>I have been reading a very good book, called "Deep Survival" by Laurence Gonzales. It's mostly about people in extreme physical survival situations--mountain climbers, fighter pilots--but what he discovers is also applicable to people whose challenges are not hostile Nature but interpersonal conflicts or their own conflicted emotions. His writing is excellent so I recommend the book itself, but to boil it all down, his thesis is that the survivor personality is someone who has been packing their 'survival kit' of emotional traits all their lives. If there is anyone, from the stories you have told us here on the board, who has a 'backpack' full of what it takes to not only survive but to triumph, you have got it. When you are down and lonely, you don't SEE that you have it, because much of it is on a subconscious level. But when it counts, those survival traits kick in like a parachute you carefully packed inflating and taking you down safely. The FEAR you won't make it is actually greater than the objective possibility that you won't. The very act of coming online to ask for help is a sign that when you are down you generate positive survival mechanisms. <br><br>I know when your emotions are raw and you are lonely and sad, as I was today when I woke up, it's hard to see yourself as someone with "The Right Stuff". But surviving what you have survived is every bit as brave as being a test pilot!<br><br>My favorite story in the book, by the way, is about Gonzales' own father whose plane was shot down over Germany in WWII and he fell 27,000 feet without a parachute into a field where a German farmer angered by Allied bombing pointed a gun at him to finish him off--but the gun failed to fire. Instead he ended up in a prison camp with just about everything you could break broken, in constant pain; even after he healed he was partly crippled. Not only did he survive, he had 8 sons and became a medical school professor.<br><br>The same flame of determination to not only live but to live well is in you. You may not be able to feel it right now, sometimes it burns low, but it's still there, like a pilot light, and it will grow brighter. Believe me, I'm not underestimating how terrible it is to be in the dark. I go there often and sometimes I think this time I will never see or feel the warmth and light again. But I always have, and so have you. Trust that inner guardian who has kept you safe before and will do so again. <br><br>"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." ~ Albert Camus<br> <p></p><i></i>
