Musings: Eyeore

 You guys remember Eyeore, right? That sad little grey donkey in Winnie-the-Pooh that was always moping around? I felt like Eyeore this summer, and I hated that because I love summer.

(Incidentally, what was A.A. Milne (who wrote WTP) thinking? "Hey, I know, let's put a clinically depressed donkey into the story. Kids will eat that up." Even more incidentally, the real life Christopher Robin was Milne's son, who felt that the author stole his childhood for profit. Maybe that explains Eyeore. Maybe Milne could see that his son was shaping up to be a real gem and it depressed the bejesus out of him.)

I really wanted to skip this post and move straight into Addie and Graydon's updates but this post REFUSED to be ignored. I kept typing stuff and it was flat and blah and frankly boring. So I finally decided to just lay this out there in hopes that tying up this virtual loose end would free up my creative energy. 

You know how in life things are mostly good and then you hit a season of sadness? Sometimes it's a crippling, loss-of-life-or-limb type of sadness and sometimes it's more the death-of-a-thousand-cuts type of blues. It's been a season of sadness around here mostly because of the "thousand cuts"...things that seem too petty or self pitying to blog about but added up together cast a pall on my summer.

And then there was an amputation type of loss too, with my parents finally, gut-wrenchingly, separating and moving into the final stages of the divorce process. I thought I was prepared for it, but I wasn't. And maybe I will blog about that process at some point, about what it's like to lose your family unit as an adult.

Or maybe I won't. It's a tricky situation because sharing something on a blog, or facebook, or twitter, or anything of that ilk, means that you're making a decision to share it for everyone. And I don't know if my family is "ready" for that. Not all of them are from the share-all generation. I'm not sure how much of that story belongs to me, and is fair game to be shared, or how much of that story is family property to be protected. If I figure it out, I'll let you know.

I guess one of the hardest things about the "summer of suck" is that it sapped my creative energy in a big way. I usually WANT to blog every night, although I only actually get to it about once or twice a week. And I take pictures every day. And sometimes I write other things. But this leaden cloud killed that. I didn't have any desire to create, or to share. I just wanted to muffle and pretend everything was normal.

I guess that's because sadness is so stigmatized in our culture. It's like this thing you have to "deal with" or "get over" or "tackle". It's like you need a plan for how to feel better or you're somehow failing at life. In reality though, sometimes life is sad. And that's OK.

There is a lot of wisdom in children's books, you know. And this summer as I read We're Going on A Bear Hunt to Addie and Graydon, I found myself reflecting on the truth of the refrain in the book. "We can't go over it! We can't go under it! Oh no, we've got to go through it!"

Finally, I just went through it. I got comfortable with being sad, in the knowledge that this, too, shall pass. And that we are allowed to suffer because it softens us and makes us open to learning. Too often in my own life, I've heard other people's bad news and said "Oh bless their hearts" in an automatic kind of way. I feel badly for them...well, actually that's not true. My mind says the right words but I don't register them in my heart. I don't actually FEEL badly for them. But in my own season of sadness, I do register that pain. I do take the time to pray for those that are hurting or tired or grieving. And I think that's important and I hope it's a lesson I take with me out of this kind of "blah" time.

And now it's fall. I love this season every year, but it's especially welcome this year. We've got apples and pumpkins and a really glorious color change this season. And all of a sudden, I am again experiencing the joy of day-to-day life with my family.

My circumstances are still the same, of course. But the pain of them feels a lot more bearable. Life does go on, and it is still sweet, and perhaps even sweeter for a little bit of a drought.

I can't tell you how great it feels to kick Eyeore to the curb. In this family, we much prefer our characters to have some joie de vivre.