I'm in a bit of a funk these days.

I can't quite put my finger on what exactly is wrong with me, though I suspect my decision to stop taking my Elavil just might be the culprit. I'm experiencing many of the recognizable symptoms of a low-grade depression: waking up at 4:00 a.m. every morning (but only on weekdays...hmmm), but yet wanting to sleep more than usual; less interest in certain activities that used to keep me humming along; pulling into myself more and away from other people.

I even wrote two journal entries in March that I've left on draft mode until now, because I just had this sense of wanting to keep to myself all thoughts running through my mind, even the most mundane ones.

I'm not unhappy, but I'm not happy either. Just kind of middle of the road. Bored. Restless. Even a little angry. Obsessively ruminating over certain things that have happened that have just downright pissed me off, and I have no way to express my anger at the person involved. Normally I'm rather forgiving when it comes to certain people, but I haven't been able to forgive this, and I really need to do that so I can move on. (Forgiveness is really for yourself, you know - it's not about the other person at all. It's something you do so that you can be free again.)

So maybe that's really what it's about - anger unexpressed is a dangerous thing - without an outlet, it starts working its way into your psyche. A body can only take so much of the adrenalin that accompanies anger, so it starts shutting itself down - and then you end up with depression instead.

Okay, so I'm psycho-babbling now. =)

So - what does this have to do with an "identity crisis"? Well - I don't feel I know who I am right now. I am uncomfortable in my own skin. I walk around all day appearing just as I always have, behaving no differently than I generally do. But it feels imaginary and almost fake to me, as though I'm merely pretending to be a normal person.

At night, I come home and just zone out until bedtime. Again, not unhappy, but rather remarkedly numb. I'm hiding from something, it seems, but what that might be eludes me, despite my penchant for internal analysis.

(Interesting side note: after I wrote that last sentence, I suddenly became anxious and had to stop writing. I suspect I was getting too close to realizing what I'm avoiding; now the moment has passed, and the answer has buried itself away again. I'm wondering now if my disinterest in writing lately is based on a fear of uncovering something I don't really want to face. That's probably been a key pattern in my writing - though one not entirely visible to outsiders: I start in one place and end up in another, more surprising area than I expected at the outset.)

So, right now, I'm following the The Zen Path Through Depression, beginning with the philosophy of Do Nothing.

  

And that's pretty much where this journal entry stopped. I almost didn't post it at all, since it's not a typical entry where I tie everything up at the end with a pithy one-liner.

But then I realized that real life is exactly that way: events and relationships often just simply fade away, or end abruptly without a grand finale. The chapters in our lives don't always come to a neat conclusion, whether in dramatic fashion or not, nor are they always wrapped up perfectly with the bow of a lesson learned.

I am not Aesop: my life is not a collection of fables.

(Heh. There. You got your one-liner after all.)