Sometimes I hide within bleakness. At least, that’s how it’s felt lately. Work stress. Financial hardship. Feeling stuck in various aspects of my life: physically, emotionally, financially, and mentally. I look around my home which, honestly, is a depression house. Neglected, messy, and a reflection of my mindset. It’s so messy I am not even sure how to organize my thoughts within this piece of writing.
Like a long post-winter hangover, I am tired. Exhausted. Recovering from trauma is not linear or long bubble baths or bundling up in blankets for a “mental health day.” It’s forcing myself to get up and go to work, the threat of unpaid bills looming. It’s doing the dishes and cleaning when I want nothing more than to disappear. Cutting the grass and setting up the garden lest the outside of the house look as chaotic and manic as I feel. Watching the perennials return with a vengeance, the pink flowers almost a bright neon shade on the crawling plant. The dark green leafy plant I have no idea the name of, soon to bloom in bursts of purple. The violets rising to the sunlight after the rain. New alyssum plants crawling about in their pots, flowering in purple and white.
(Violets, photo by author)
In the early days of spring, I noticed something in my garden preparations: initial buds on my young lilac bush. I’ve had it for three or four years now, and it’s been strengthening its roots and branches to ready itself to blossom into the purple flowers I adore so. Would it finally bloom this year?
This week, it did. And it felt like the true start to a new season. A new era. Lilac bushes spend their first few years growing resilient and tougher branches on which to hold their blooms. My inner witch is taking it as a sign.
Life is a lilac bush. We all have a tree of life that doesn’t grow upwards in excess until the roots are strong. Sometimes it needs periods of growth and becoming ready to hold the abundance that’s coming. My tarot and oracle cards have all been pointing to some sort of abundance and bettering of fortune to come, should I continue with my plans and on the road I currently walk. If I maintain patience and consistency.
Maybe I haven’t been stuck. Maybe that growth of roots and tougher branches is where I’ve been. Maybe now, it’s time to begin blooming.
(Beginning lilac blooms, photo by author)
Look at lawns in comparison. Plain, trimmed short, shallow roots, maintained with toxic and fake chemicals and little natural life to it. A native plant garden brimming with wildflowers and bushes have deeper roots, preventing floods as they soak up excess water. They grow taller, burst with colour, and attract pollinators which create an ecosystem. A community. Humans are the same. For communities or human connection, there needs to be authenticity, strong roots, a support system, and diversity. Diversity builds empathy and friendship.
The lilac bush truly burst with new leaves and flowers when a thunderstorm rolled through this last week. I was stuck inside at work, yearning to take a long walk in the rain, get drenched, puddle jump, to close my eyes and listen to the thunder. I relate to the chaos, I suppose.
Most people seek shelter from the rain but I am content to walk through it despite thunder or lightening crashing overhead. I guess I have been ripped open so many times that it’s familiar to me. Or maybe I am accustomed to a lack of shelter when storms rage that standing out in the midst of it is calming now.
But we can’t live that way forever. We cannot forever be a storm, nor can we always be a young lilac bush, stranded in weakness when we should and could be thriving. Complex PTSD and mental illness can truly stunt that growth. When all you’ve known is depression and mental chaos, crashing storms in your brain, a soul of rain and sorrow and anguish, it’s terrifying to let that go. To let the sun peek through and feel the warmth of something new.
A depression house isn’t merely a physical dwelling. It’s a mental and spiritual prison, too. I am at a point where I am sick and tired of my own bullshit, longing to move on and grow branches that will some day flower and welcome the light when the rain is over.
I’ve done it all, it seems. I’ve been on meds, quit smoking cigarettes, cut back on drinking, been in therapy, changed my diet, done endless journaling and self-therapy (and continue to), taken supplements that are supposed to help depression, and sometimes… well, on the bad days it all feels pointless. It feels like I’ll never get better and this is the best I’ll ever be but it isn’t the best I want to be. My body and brain feel like a depression house with no escape. Flapping wings against walls merely caked with dust and old wood but they never quite break open.
And damn, I want them to.
Darkness doesn’t last forever. Storms run out of rain. Lilacs, after a few tumultuous young years, bloom. That means there must an exit to this shadowy and desolate depression house, right?
(Lilac blooms, photo by author)