The Underworld

It's been a dark Winter.  And I've been journeying down into it.  I feel like Orpheus. traveling into my underworld , not so much in hope of finding Gil and bringing him back with me, but in hope of finding my desire to live, my energy, my passion for    anything,  a project, an idea even a recipe.    I'm walking in the dark and can't find my spark.  In the past I would have stomped my foot at myself and said "snap out of it! You have (sibs, husbands, kids) to take care of! Pull up your socks Ms Page!"  but now, I'm letting go and sliding down into it.  Depression? Probably, but I sense I need to go down into it to find whatever will make me want to live again.    Unlike Orpheus, I hope I will sense it's presence and be able to guide it gently back to the surface without losing it by trying to grasp it.  And perhaps there the metaphor ends.  Even my love of words can't save me now.   It wouldn't be a hero's journey if the end were clear or certain.

Perhaps

I've been swimming in a sea of anxiety, frozen pipes, goat death, endless possibilities.  I've endured anxiety, tried to bury it, tolerate it.  But perhaps this undertow electrical charge is the primordial stew that Life emerges from?   What is "peaceful belly" but sleep, my favorite soporific, lulling me to withdraw from the struggle?  Perhaps this anxiety is my "new black", to be embraced as the tension which will pull me into the battle of the "real" world, impel me to walk on the hot coals of my dreams, make them real or at least move through them so as not to be burned.  

The endless possibilities scare me, I long for my restricted life with it's clear priorities, Gil and the kid's well being, my identity as a self sufficient pioneer.

If I am free  to do, to be.    anything? How the hell do I chose? Find the energy to do anything else but survive?  Face my dangerous lack of knowledge and skills? Dare to screw up in a Royal way, court death, mine and those I'm responsible for? 

Perhaps this anxiety in my belly is like the energizing burn in the belly of my low cal days, to be embraced as a force for Good.  Perhaps.