Sigils of the Sweetest Tongue

“I was so scared to give up depression, fearing that somehow the worst part of me was actually all of me.”

“I imagine there is a place of deep rest—not in the resting but after, when the body has forgotten the weight of fatigue or of its many betrayals—how unfair that once I thought it clever to blame my body for the wounds in me: the ankle bulbous and aching, the heaviness in the thigh, and the fat, the encroachment of flesh. It is hard to believe that there are those who do not know that it is possible to let things go, to then see the expansion of flesh—it is so easy, and that knowing is a pathology. What is unknown to me is the clear day of rest— I carry a brain of crushed paper, everything unfolds as if by magic, every spot of understanding is a miracle, I cannot take any credit for the revelations, they come and go as easily as the wind. You must know that this is a preamble to an epiphany I will record— the late-morning light of October, the damp soiled back yard, the verdant green lawn, the bright elegance of leaves strewn over it all, turning nonchalantly in the wind, and the Nebraska sky blue as a kind of watery ease, a comfort, it is all I can say, the kind one knows, even standing there waiting for the dog to squat; one that I will remember for years but will never have the language to speak of—one of those precious insignificances that we collect and hoard. The moment lasts ten breaths, and in that silence I imagine that I can see spirits, I can know myself, and I will not fear the betrayals of body and love and earth, and the machinations of self-made emperors and pontificates. It will be winter soon. I know my body is collecting water in its nether regions, the weight of the hibernating mammal, storing everything in drowsy, slow-moving preservation. I mean I am losing myself to the shelter we build to beat back sorrow and the weight of our fears. I have covered thousands of miles in a few days, and I feel my parts flaking off, a shedding of yellow pieces covering the turning earth, and I am helpless to this soft disappearing that some call sleep. I will stretch out and breathe.”

one day, despite everything, a really clear and present peace will descend on you. you will find yourself almost retroactively feeling that peace as it happens: you'll realize it's been a few minutes or hours or days since you Thought About It. you'll notice that you're actually fully relaxed and you've been relaxed for a little while. that while today might just be a normal day, it felt like a normal day - it was a little tiring, but not overly so; there were moments of fun in there, and you got to see a little bit of beauty. you will realize that in between the self-help books you've "read" (glanced over) and the podcasts and the journaling, this moment is the tip of a long and beautiful ship you've been swimming towards for years now. you will realize: you've been teaching (coaching, parenting, punishing-sometimes, but ultimately yes - loving) yourself to see the beauty in the world, and now you do it almost automatically, by rote. you will realize that happiness is not just the wild abandon of summer; the concerts and the parties and the beaches. happiness is like love: it is gentle and soft, unassuming. it is confident and ready, a stable and earnest peace that is not the brittle holding-fast of your childhood but instead a real and impenetrable wall; a thing that once-felt cannot be dismissed. a thing that will always be there, in a sense, or at least will be something you could always make again - and you know this because you built it.