Some sort of healing dance

I’ve been working for the past week on finishing the wire lace that is supposed to unite the first and second works of the project #fromanorangepointofview .

I’ve also been my usual energetic morning self. I thought that it was because I had something to work on, except…

I started working on this wire lace almost a year ago. It wasn’t a consistent work, since I had no reason to rush with finishing it before the second and third works were done.

It crossed my mind for a moment that last month my mental state degraded as much also because I had nothing to work on, having the third work almost finished (truth be told, it is finished as far as anyone looking at it would be concerned).

However, I had this wire lace to finish and I thought to work on it, but didn’t find the energy or will to do so.

In fact, none of my coping mechanisms except anger worked to get me out of the dark place I was slipping to. I couldn’t meditate. Yoga or dance or anything related either bored me or annoyed me. Doing nothing didn’t seem an option as left alone I would just stay in bed feeling nothing except occasional dispair.

After the surgery, I joked that my brain got restarted. I can’t do yoga or any form of physical effort yet due to doctors restrictions, though I dance (can’t stop myself). But now I can meditate. I started the second night after getting back home, and I didn’t even play the mantra on the phone, I sang it to myself. And I kept at it every night, and some mornings I wake up at 4:30 and can’t go back to sleep, and the mantra just plays in my head between intrusive thoughts that won’t let me sleep to help me let them go. I do not do that conciouslly. It just happens.

I did give this tool to my brain conciouslly when I started meditating two year ago, but I could force myself to do it since February until now. If I have no motivation to do anything, I won’t be motivated to sit singing a mantra to myself, that is terribly boring. Who would do that?

I know some people think that bullying yourself into doing something to get yourself out of a dark place is the thing to do, but my experience since February shows me that to do that I only made myself fall from higher ground, and invitably deeper.

The only thing that got me out of there was anger.

I tried to unleash this anger since I started working on the video performance I will finish editing soon, I hope, with almost no succes. There was one instance that was promising, but afterwards my life just went downhill, and for whatever reason the reaction to all the bad news was not to be angry, but to be reasonable and find solutions and express my needs and emotions …and no one was listening or carrying, of course. As long as I was doing whatever I should be doing, all was well and good.

Only after I recorded the video performamce did this anger start to creep in. And for a short moment I was contemplating how trying to force it out in a safe environment that is an artistic experience achieved the opposite, but then I realized something that felt so horrible the moment I realized it, it made me throw away the phone I’m writing this on as if it was burning.

In April, I went to a performance, during which was some sort of “healing dance” which I enjoyed, but haven’t thought much of in terms of healing. For the briefest moment I thought that triggered my anger, but it happened two days before filming my video performance, and I was utterly without energy the day of the filming. I was most definitely not angry, though I referred to myself as a nerve rack that day. Which I was. After the filming ended, I stood for some time in from of the gallery motionless, not sure what I am doing there, where I am supposed to go and why. When I joined my friends a half an hour later they put my mood under the “what are you gonna do with those artists, eh?”.

Anyway, the evening I saw that performance with the healing dance, I did write down my anger in a monologue I was supposed to perform in a play I was working on with other people, and that was supposed to be mostly movement as I didn’t want to verbalise much, but because the coordinator of the project insisted I had to speak more.

Unfortunately, the coordinator didn’t want me to express anger with that monologue but sadness, which I didn’t care for, so after a breakdown, I decided to pull out of the project, and instead of unleashing my anger on her for not allowing me to express something I needed (I later realized the issue might have been that my anger is expressed aggressively, but that could have been worked on, though neither of us had the energy for it), I was reasonable once again and tried to be as assertive as I can an acknowledge her feelings. Later, she acknowledged mine, and all was good in the universe …not.

Because my anger just build up now and was licking towards no one in particular, it finally hit where it found fertile ground, of course. It wasn’t towards my mother as expected. For whatever reason, I tried to be as assertive as I could towards her also. Wish I didn’t. Wish I snapped her head off instead, metaphorically ofc …🙄

People that say you are supposed to do this or that do not consider internal resources. Here is a paradox: you need to eat to have energy, but eating consumes energy. If you have no energy, you can’t eat enough to get to full strength, if you try to get to full strength from a weak state that will make things worst or even kill you. Feels like this is what people having a relative balance do not understand about those who lost any kind of balance. I can’t even say I was down, because at least that would have been stable. My mood was bouncing between extrem high and low at a few days intervals.

You may be mocking people that record videos or take photos instead of living in the present, but memory is very faulty. Looking for the photo taken during the performance I spoke of before, and I almost took none, I saw a video I recorded mid-April of a #feelgood exercise I did during a home yoga practice. I know occasionally I found energy to do yoga or something else at home during this period, but I looked at the date and know that two days later I was anesthesaised. I remember my mood because it was Easter weekend and I met up with a very dear friend and her children, and spent most of the day with them. This also means I biked and it was a sunny beautiful day. “They” say this helps with mood. Dude, I was contemplating suicide while looking over the sea one sunny day in Barcelona. There is no recipe. It might help, or it might not. When the wound is to deep a superficial bandage won’t do much, but delay the invitable.

My therapist said depression is some sort of learned powerlessness, and although being powerless is my biggest fear, it is not what I felt the past few months and I cannot stress that enough. My state of mind was not I cannot do stuff, but I do not want to do anything anymore.

I still don’t want to do a lot of things. Fortunately, I know people that can help with some of those things. Asking for their help is also something I do not want to do, but I guess I have to get over myself at some point.

This last thought is also something insessitive towards people with depression.

Get over yourself.

At any rate, I am not depressed anymore. I am just angry.

Fuck you!