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After seven weeks of shielding I am finding the occasional ripples washing in.  The ripple-sounding-sighs.  The to and fro of a small discontent.  The reassurance of its repetition …

Aahhhh … I’m okay …. Sighhhhh … It’s not so bad …. Wheessshhhh … I’m okay really … Stayyyyyyy …. Should get moving …. Sittttttt … Really should move …. Stayyyyyyy …..

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It’s the onset of depression.

That slow sucking sticky weightlessness.  A clinging that creeps cleverly.  A void that grows without notice.  Opening an inviting back-hole so gently ..

Sighhhh … Stayyyyyy … Slowlyyyy …

Sucking me down to a nothingness (I deserve).  A nothingness of what’s the point.  A point (and debate!) which escapes me doing anything about (because of the nothingness).  A nothingness that gets harder and harder to escape.  A nothingness that’s as addictive as the prescribed pills (I don’t have nor want) supposedly the answer.

The light calls me.

But the nothingness is stronger.

Because the light is of plans and actions and doing.

And the nothingness calls again …

“So much energy – so much more than you have – so little needed here – what’s the point – stayyyyy … siggghhhhh … so easyyyy here ….”

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Over the years – and again this morning – I remember and find my go-to lifebelt.  A lifebelt I have found is the only thing that works.

It goes like this:

Feel the seat beneath your bum.  It is comfortable.  Feel the warmth around your chest.  It is comforting.  Look at your fingertips.  Clacking away on the keyboard as usual.  See the words flowing onto the page.  I am okay.  I am safe.  I am warm.  I am fed.  I am hydrated.  I am me.  I can do this.  I am doing this.  I am here right now and in this moment as tough and as strong as I know I am.  Feel the energy coursing again?  Feel the uplift in your head?  Sense that nothingness fall away?  See the light is just living – nothing special – nothing you haven’t done every day for sixty-three years and counting – how many days is that (where’s the calculator … 63 x 365 (forget the leap years) is 22,995 days – and how many minutes is that … 22,995 x 24 x 60 … 33,112,800 minutes you have survived the nothingness!  How many moments Paul – how many – go on – break the calculator just for fun … you know you want to … One billion, 986 million, 768 thousand moments!  And it didn’t break the calculator!  Nearly TWO BILLION MOMENTS I have survived the nothingness!  Well then if I’ve done it that often I can do it again.  Right now (although I think it’s happened already) … Nothingness, where did you go – I can’t see you, hear you, feel you, need you, want you, don’t even want to look for you.  You’ve gone.  Hello life – hello living – hello another moment filled with all I want in everything!   

Hello everyone – I’m back!!

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I have been told that God is just an imaginary figure of my imagination.  As though my imagination is a liability.  The same imagination that just brought me back from a black hole (in seconds).

An imagination that brings me love, hope, possibility, potential.

If you dismiss my imaginary figure you dismiss me – you also dismiss yourself as you also live by (and in) your own imagination.  We all do.  It’s that bit we call the soul, call our beliefs, call “facts” to live by – imaginary stuff that we fight over and debate endlessly.  Some find an imagined (and debilitating) “correctness”.  A correctness (that because it is “correct”) we then impose on ourselves AND those around us.

An imaginary correctness we cling to as a lifebelt.

Except this lifebelt is high maintenance.  It demands I close down my imagination.  Demands I close you down for suggesting differently.  Demands I find and belong to those whose lifebelt of correctness is the same as mine.  This lifebelt becomes a thing I need and must feed.

That isn’t freedom.

That isn’t me.  That isn’t we.  That isn’t love.  That is something else we imagine to be love.

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Is my imaginary friend real or not?

I have nearly two billion moments that say:

.“Does it really matter?”

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