The Inconstant Self
All of this is temporary
I live life with a brain and a mind that feels like it is constantly trying to bury me. In a way, I am more content in the darker days, because it feels safe. I don’t have to worry about the fall of the moment, the crash that feels inevitable.
Before I realized why life felt harder for me than for others, I was always attached to what was never mine. The idea that every friend you meet is yours forever, the idea that every love you find could never falter, and the idea that the version of you that exists now is permanent.
I was once someone who avoided change because my brain could not grasp the idea of letting go. Each person, place, or opportunity that abandoned me was a death I mourned… deeply. In a way, I still think of all I have lost, wondering and negotiating on how I could have made it stay.
As I have come to understand the brain and depression, I have realized I will never be able to outrun it. No grip could hold onto something that was never meant to stay. I will always have a dark cloud inside me, storming and darkening the light that I find. Each emotion heightened, each feeling deepened— but what a blessing it is to feel. What a blessing to know that everything you are or have, will not always be.
Understanding the impermanence of life and thoughts allows you to release the attachment to it all. Each season of life comes with chapters, people, and experiences that are fleeting. You should have gratitude for that.
I no longer run from my mind. Each thought or feeling I have, I feel. Because at any given moment, it can change.
I think releasing attachment allows you to appreciate everything that much more. Imagine how gratified you will feel with each person you meet, each experience you get, or thought you have, knowing not when, but at some point, it will be gone.
We should all be grateful for the versions of ourselves we've outgrown. We should all give our bodies and minds grace; nothing is permanent. I know we always hear to appreciate the good, but I encourage you to also appreciate the bad.
I once felt like depression was the driver of my life, and I was just a helpless passenger. Born with a mind darker than most, forced to feel the bad and terrified to feel the good. Once you release the attachment to life and all that is in it, you take control.
I am the driver of my life, and although I have a passenger I did not invite, I am lucky to feel it all, with my deepest capacity.
Bad news— nothing is permanent.
Good news— nothing is permanent.