splintered mind - but keep on keeping on

about how we've all talked to each other about our challenges and have supported each other.

It seems so obvious a statement - but my mental buoyancy and stability eludes me again

and again - taking me to a square one type place. Thanks for understanding my friends.

This really is a safe place to bring my focus back to the interpersonal as opposed to the distorted

fragmented and resulting panicked mental state that sometimes comes about in my days - probably from discord, disappointment or  stress - but also

for the creative squirrel brain that I have that tends to take thoughts too far.

This morning I kept falling asleep during the services I was given the responsibility 

of leading. Not the best thing to be doing. But then anyway - I got things done

and done pretty well - just a couple of hiccups that me and my partner behind the iconostasis

caught pretty quickly. So all in all a positive, good morning service. Then

I had a coffee and I was on my phone until meal time started - then we had the meal.

During and before the meal time I thought about how healthy I felt and I thought about potentially going back to work.

(The political times additionally make me worry that SSDI will go away.)

I thought about how those around me in my family might say things like that would encourage me to stay

the course with the monastery and that it has helped me so much. It indeed has - it's been spartan simple living

which has really helped me focus and heal mentally enough to cope with my life. A really healing way of life.

I've gained some wisdom too which I feel I can use to help others with their struggles as a confessor priest.

I also thought about my mental health how it can come and go - and how it seemed at the moment (this very morning)

I was doing pretty well -

and so I also thought about my comfort of place here at the monastery and with my friends and family -

that kind of coziness within which they might be encouraging me to stay made me realize that if I do go back to outside work - I will have to forge

my own path just as anyone else would - that we're all indepdendent - but also interdependant - and it would be myself that I would need to listen to - 

and fight for myself regardless of the support or discouragement I might receive. This

helped me and yet it also took me to a place of mental extremes. My personality felt like it

split and fractured and I didn't know how to ground myself. So I looked at the nun across

the way - I KNOW SHE'S HAD A HORRIBLY TOUGH LIFE... I know she has taken medications

as well in the extreme. She's still here doing her thing - amazing - tough as nails and a survivor!!!

So I resolved to just keep on keeping on - with scattered fractured brain or not - I know

how to take care of myself and the work that needs to get done...I resolved to come

on here- and as I began to think of you guys -and start the process of organizing my thoughts

into an interpersonal way - I really calmed down and reclaimed my stability. I think that's a wonderful

thing I am realizing. The interpersonal can really be a wonderful curative - rather than feeling alone

with my illness/condition. It's restoring me to a constructive state of being.