Getting up the Gumption

                                                             

Yesterday, Jill and I went to North Carolina Pride for the first time in several years. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy looking at all the color and soaking up the festive atmosphere. Usually, when Pride day rolls around, it seems like too far to go, too much effort to drive all the way to Durham ---- twenty-some miles ---- and anyway, if you've seen one pride, you've seen them all.

Home Sweet Home

But that's the way life seems to be these days.

I was never much of a homebody. Just ask my kids, who claim that they had to go to their friends' houses to get a good meal. That's only partially true --- I did work a lot of dinner hour shifts when I was waiting tables back in the day, but I cooked, really I did. 

Right from the get-go, I was a busy, busy girl. I liked to be out and about. I wasn't a sulky teenager, sitting in my bedroom with the music playing and the curtains closed. I wanted to hang with my friends, ride the bus out to the Staging Area for movies or bowling or horsing around in the snack bar. By the time I was 14, I gleefully added going down to the strip to drink beer at Gertie's Hole in the Wall. My Bremerhaven peeps know what I'm talking about.

After I got sober at 30, I had a whole new world of social activities ---- meetings, coffee with friends, the meeting before the meeting, the meeting after the meeting, sobriety dances and gatherings of all sorts. And lots of time on the phone. I've got a long history of being a social creature.

So why, now that I've got plenty of time to do what I want, am I sticking so close to home? Part of it is that I really like it here. I get to be with Jill, which I definitely enjoy. The critters I live with are entertaining and sweet, and I don't like to leave them alone for too long. My books and computer and movies are home-based. I pretty much have everything I like to do right here at home. And, for some reason, it gets harder and harder to be among people. 

Age? Fatigue? Developmental Stage? (Yes, adults do have developmental stages, too.) I hover over that deep, black pool of depression, but I haven't dived in lately. And maybe that's the deal. It takes effort not just to stay afloat, but to avoid being sucked to the depths. And I carry that effort all the time.

The voice in my head ---- you know the one ----- says "Just get out and DO something. Commit. Don't be lazy. Show some gumption."

It doesn't feel that simple. I wish it were. I never meant my "golden years" to be haunted by clouding darkness. I couldn't have predicted it. I do what I can to regulate this part of myself that feels so foreign and, at the same time, enticingly familiar. And I keep on walking.

If you, invisible reader, have wrestled with depression, or know someone who does, please be kind. It takes more than gumption to tame this beast, which can attack without warning and leave a teary puddle in its wake. Bootstraps and will-power are not the best defense, though they may play a part. Just don't rely on gumption. Acceptance and love will work better, I believe.