Unwelcome

Monday 27th July, 2020

It is a day when one could be deeply fed up. The drizzle settled in before I was awake or got up. Six hours later it is still drizzling. The normally glorious view across the Tay is blotted out by a curtain of falling droplets. The water birds themselves seem mute. The vibrant yellow flowers of my courgette plants have semi closed and almost look as if they want to rot away and return whence they came. On peering out of the garden door I saw no active bee, no flying insects and even the ants in their huge nest in the large garden urn are invisible.

Just after 10pm I went to bed last night. I was in my usual mood. I had had a delicious  supper including strawberries picked that day to which I added thickened cream. The sun had shone and I had managed a good stroll through a private park and sat looking at the lake the natural life around. Almost idyllic

Washed and changed I got in to bed. I do not know what happened but I felt a cloud of depression settle on me. It is difficult to describe but I simply froze. My mind wasn't exactly numb but it seemed like wet concrete or semi dried mud. A sense of utter futility overtook me. I must be arrogant and proud for I felt I had had a life of utter meaninglessness, out of my control, washed and moved by tides of emotion, fears and desires: I had never been or taken control but I was hapless. I heard Paul of Tarsus's words echoing: I do the things I do not want to do and do not do the things I want to do. I had failed or at least never achieved anything. I was not a man of integrity. I was not a man of generosity or tolerance or love. I was not a man who had used his talents or benefitted from the remarkable life and family I had been given. I was just a seething mass of inconsequentiality, no substance, no principles, no backbone but adrift in a sea of vanity.

It lasted three hours or seemed to. Suddenly my technique of self distraction came in to play and I slept. A strange dream I cannot recall but I woke in a more buoyant, positive mood. Now my task is to search for the cause. It could be chemical, hormonal, it could be dredged up horrors of fear and my failures. It could be the continuing isolation. I do not know but I will not let it win, whatever it is.

I told a friend and she sent me this:

Sometimes

It might just be better

To sit

And look

And wonder

And breathe

Being grateful for all the little things.