Hopelessness

I am pathetically behind in posting the events of my life and our family.  There have been so many moments over the last six months where I have thought, "This will make a great blog post," or, "I really need to write this down on the blog," but sadly, I haven't had the motivation to do so.  I have been consumed with a melancholy and an anxiety that I have never before felt, leading to sleepless nights, weight gain, and just an overwhelming inability to feel happy.

I wish I could say it's depression--I wish there was a pill I could take to make it all go away--but I keep getting up each morning with a list of things to do, and I get them all done. I still have a desire to live life, and through the darkest moments, I still find hope, but there is an underlying sadness and worry which don't ever leave my side.

I wish there was a solution.  I have spoken with my therapist about my feelings, and she gives me a perspective which shows me that I don't need to fear, and yet the instigators of my sadness and worry won't magically disappear anytime soon.  I find the needed perspective slips through my fingers like the waves on a beach, there one moment and gone the next.

To add to it all, I have a lot of triggers around the Fall season.  Some of the worst experiences in my life have happened over the past few years between Halloween and Christmas, so with the tree up and the stockings hung, my mind revisits those moments and sees that none of them has been resolved.  That is a painful realization when at this same time last year, or the year before, I told myself that "by this time next year" all would be normal and good again...but it's not.

I feel incredibly lonely in my sadness.  I go walking to listen to my scriptures or uplifting music but I don't feel better afterwards.  I try to eat away my anxiety, but the subsequent weight gain makes me feel even worse.  God bless the friends who listen to me and attempt to offer consolation--I can appreciate what they are saying, but at the end of the conversation, my troubles are still living, breathing gremlins in my mind.  Even this morning, I look at John, fast asleep next to me, and wish for sleep to visit me as well, but instead I am left laying in bed for hours, turning the worries over in my mind and seeing no resolution for them in the upcoming day.  The dark circles under my eyes will be ever present as will the headaches from lack of sleep and anxiety.

I can't do more things to try and distract myself from the worries of my life.  I can't learn to play another instrument, or make another friend, or plan another trip, or serve another shift in the temple.  In fact, it's the lack of control over the things that worry me the most that cause me the most anxiety. I don't know how to process that lack of control, how to let go of the hopes and assumptions that I have always had, and give way to a different life and a lack of happiness.  How am I to feel when "men are that they might have joy" isn't a gift in my life, but I see it repeated in the lives of so many others?

I don't know how to live this life.