Until I found that there was truly heaven on earth, I was living in an opposite plane of existence. I was in the throws of deep depression and hating my very being.
I used life as a distraction to my pain instead of seeing it for what it truly was, a way out of my pain. I was a miserable girl and thought growing up would help me leave that behind. I found that as an adult that the miserable girl would stay with me most of my life. That as an adult, life gave you so much to take care of that it helped distract me from thinking too deeply. You were supposed to make a living. You had to pay bills. You had to have children. You were supposed to create a successful life. This was enough distraction that thinking was not necessary for a big chuck of the day.
But the interaction with other human beings always made me sad. I thought that as adults we would leave behind the childish bickering, back stabbing, bullying, gossipy, oppressive, destructive behavior, but found that these things did not just belong to a childish mind, but part of a human mind. Even with all the distractions, interaction with people always brought me back to depression.
But today my most happy times involve interaction with other human beings. I've learned to surround myself with supportive friends. I've finally see the joy that my own family brings me. I've learned to keep the negative out of my life and embrace those that bring only joy.
A lifetime cannot be judged in just a few years, but in decades. I've learned that what I was, and what I experienced in the past, no matter how painful or negative, prepared me for my future self, the person I was always supposed to be. The person I had been pretending to be all along. She finally became the real me.
And when you become the real you, you no longer look at the past as much, you look forward with anticipation and maybe even a little trepidation, but most of all you learn to look at the moment and to live in the moment. And in those precious moments you find heaven on earth.
My other blog Waiting Out Depression is the yang to my yin Searching For Heaven on Earth.
