Emotional Healing: or, Why we need pets

I cried today, for no good reason.  I was going along, slow but sure, doing my job, when all of a sudden a huge wave of emotion knocked me down and I suddenly found myself depressed.  Thankfully, December is a very slow month at the pool store, so since I didn't have any customers to deal with, I let myself cry. 

I spent many years depressed.  Suicidal, actually.  Every day I would have to search for reasons to stay alive, because on most days, I woke up determined to end my life.  Every day, I had to mentally search my world for a reason that I should live just one more day.  On most of those days, I stayed alive for my cat, Pearl.  She needed me.  I knew that she would not survive without me.  She was afraid of most people, and I couldn't think of anyone compassionate enough to give her the special care that she required.  And so I stayed, always just for one more day.  This period in my life gives the saying "One Day at a Time" new meaning for me.  Same with "Choose Life."  It means something different to me than what was intended by the bumper stickers.



I can't really explain why I was depressed; I just was.  There wasn't really a story attached to it that I could point my finger to and say, Here:  This is why I am sad. Depression is more than mere sadness.  Oh, sadness is in there, but mostly there is despair and hopelessness, mixed with shame and unworthiness.  Some of you will know exactly what I'm talking about.  You might not ever talk about it out loud, but you know exactly how this feels.  Some others of you won't have a clue what this feels like, and I envy you. If I had to explain it to you, I'd have to say that it comes from feeling like the mistakes of the  past have completely destroyed any hope for the future.  Hence all the despair and hopelessness drama. 

But all of that was a very long time ago.  I've since learned to live in the Now.  In the present moment, the past can have no effect on the future, because neither of those things really exist except in my imagination.  I've also learned to focus on the good stuff by consciously maintaining an attitude of gratitude toward everything that is currently a part of my life.  When I started The Attitude of Gratitude Project, I did it specifically to keep myself from falling back into depression.  Having survived it once, I am not willing to go back there.  I've learned ways to prevent it, like being actively grateful for everything in my life, even the bad stuff.  I've learned to see my current situation, whatever it may be, in a positive aspect, seeing it all as good.  By learning to do these things, I've gradually learned to be happy.  Today, if you were to ask most people who know me, they would tell you that I am a happy, positive person.  On most days, anyway.  On some days, though, for no apparent reason, I cry.

This current wave of depression took me by surprise.  Yes, I've suffered some huge losses this past year; but they have been more than offset by all of the good things that have happened.  So the depression doesn't come out of my current situation.  Rather, I believe it is emotion that has been trapped in my body until I was ready to release it.  In her book, Molecules of Emotion, Candace Pert explains that unexpressed emotions actually turn into chemicals that bond to polypeptides in our cells until a later time when we are more prepared to process them.  These unexpressed emotions become a physical part of our biology.

Anyone who has ever grieved the death of someone close to them knows how this works.  In the beginning, the pain is unbearable; it feels like a knife in the heart.  Then, after a while, you find that you have more and more days when you're not sad at all.  When even more time has passed, whole months or even years will go by without active grieving and sadness.  Then, all at once, something will trigger that old emotion, and tears will begin to flow for no apparent reason.  I've grieved a lot of deaths over the years, so I am very familiar with this process.  Once, not long after the sudden death of my partner, I had acupuncture on my lung meridian, which in Chinese medicine is related to the emotion of grief.  I cried for four days straight.  It was the strangest thing.  Although I cried and felt sadness, I wasn't actually sad.  I could tell that old grieving was being cleared from my cells and finally being released through my tears.

That is why I am convinced that my current depression was old and leftover emotion, not a new round of darkness.  Yes, I felt depressed, but not the kind of soul-killing despair that characterized all of those dark years.  How could I tell it was depression and not grieving, you ask?  There's a huge difference in the quality of the sadness.  Grieving is at least sadness with a reason.  Depression needs no good reason.  At any rate, I can recognize an old friend no matter what disguise he may wear.

I dealt with it the way I have learned to deal with all powerful, painful emotions.  I cried.  I tried not to explain the feeling with my mind, coming up with excuses to be depressed.  Oh, if I wanted to go there I could give you a whole list of reasons why it made sense to be depressed.  But I knew that if I did that, I would feed the depression and it might take off full force, with possibly fatal results.  I've learned that the best thing to do with powerful feelings like despair and rage is to completely drop the story in my head and just lean into the emotion.  Really feel it.  Honor it.  Pay attention to all the different aspects of it.  Where do I feel it in my body?  What word best describes this emotion?  Is there more than one emotion happening?  Do they conflict?  I've learned that emotions are very real; it's the story we tell ourselves about the emotion that is made up in our heads.

I also did something else to help myself:  I admitted how I felt to other people so that they could share their love with me.  I actually posted on Facebook that I was depressed, because although I felt alone and isolated,  part of me knew that was a lie made up by a twisted mind.  And yes, my friends -- even people I've never met -- responded with an outpouring of love for which I am more grateful than even I can express in words.

What really tipped the scale for me though, what really helped to pull me out of that deep pit of despair, the bottomless pit with slippery walls that is almost impossible to climb out of by yourself, was my new little kitten, Angel.  I've only had him for two weeks, and he's still a baby.  And yet, he knew I was sad and gave me as much love as his little heart could express.  Normally, he's very independent.  He plays, mostly, and although he lets me pick him up, he's not exceptionally cuddly.  My old cat, Pearl, stayed right next to me all the time, for 16 years.  I called her velcro kitty.  Angel is not like that, at all.  Unlike Pearl, he's well adjusted and happy and independent.  Yesterday, though, when I came home crying, he never left my side.  He made me hold him while he purred his soft love to me.  He sat on my lap, and tried really hard to help me write this post.  He never left my side until I stopped being sad.  How cool is that?

What is even more amazing to me, is that I even have a kitten at all.  Pearl has only been gone for 10 weeks, and I didn't think I was ready to have another cat.  But God knew better.  He knew that I would be going through some emotional healing this week, and that I was going to need a cat to help me through it.  So he sent me an Angel.

Those of you who have pets know what I'm talking about.  Those of you who have never had pets are missing out on the best unconditional love on the entire planet.  Pets, way more than people, are able to give us the pure, unconditional love of God, just when we need it most.  The love they give is way worth the grieving we must endure when they leave us.  Grieving is a huge part of life.  So is sadness, and anger, and despair, and hopelessness, and shame, and guilt.  These are emotions that we all share.  They are the price of being human.  Thank God he thought to give us pets so that we could survive them.