Empty Cereal Box has been dark for awhile. That’s because I’ve been grappling with a huge amount of anxiety and depression, which have made it nearly impossible to write or do anything constructive or creative, save for the daily necessities.
In a nutshell, my repressed mental monsters that began after my roots and identity were destroyed, and that eternal emptiness which began three days after my mother said good-bye to me forever that day I’d been in the world for three days, have begun to ask their due. They have been time bombs waiting to go off. Yet maybe this is the best thing that has ever happened to me, this realization that, like every living thing, I really am dying.
All my life I’ve lived to conform and get along to avoid rejection, mostly sacrificing my own feelings and needs to the desperate need to belong. All these years I’ve denied my grief and inner loneliness and pain. This in a world filled with bottomless grief and loneliness and pain.
For the first time in my adult life I’m able to get medical help because of (temporary) student insurance. I went to a medical provider and she gave me drugs for anxiety/depression and insomnia. I couldn’t even take them a month. They were shredding me, making things worse. This reaction is to be expected from these drugs–things must get worse before they get better. But the idea of introducing a chemical maelstrom into my body only added to my anxiety. I told her I wanted off all drugs three weeks later. She told me to taper off and look into acupuncture. So far I haven’t begun that, but apparently it can help. I’m too afraid to get the panel of tests she wants me to have: mammogram, pap smear, blood tests. So I’ve stopped going to see her.
I did find a therapist who was herself adopted. I’ve only seen her twice, but she’s the only therapist I’ve approached who truly understands that emptiness. The first time was a general mutual introduction. The second visit brought up issues for me and I cried because I felt she was dominating me and I couldn’t relax. She was kind and listened to me.
She recommended that I get a copy of The Girls Who Went Away and gain a new understanding of what mothers like mine had to go through when they gave up their babies to strangers. I followed her advice and cried uncontrollably as I read the first chapter in the words of a girl who had to give up her baby.
Another major stress factor for me has been that the Pacific Northwest, where I live, received a cloud of radiation fallout from Fukushima back in March, and so our rainfall, our bodies, our food all contain death particles. Children are particularly vulnerable. We only learned this through leaks this month–the media has been criminally silent on this issue.
As anxiety dominates everything in my life, I found an online support forum for people with anxiety. Unfortunately, every time I posted a question, the moderators deleted it. I have no idea why. What I wrote was neither unfriendly nor aggressive. The old rejection thing kicked in after that, so I had to drop one of the supports in my life.
However, I’ve also begun to explore Mindfulness Meditation. It has a Buddhist approach, but it may be practiced without any spiritual tradition whatsoever. In my situation, in the deplorable state of things in this world, and now that an ophthalmologist discovered I have cataracts in both eyes, the type of cataracts that are aggressive and quickly cause blindness, I seek refuge in a larger truth, in recognizing that I am not my pain, my grief, my cataracts, my adoptive emptiness, the state of the world, or anything outside my true state of mindful awareness.
Time to get off line and do some sitting practice. Thank you for visiting and reading. I wish you peace.
