Depressed/Have I Lost My Passion

So I had a sad, depressed day yesterday (and am still feeling upset and unhappy today), but I also know that everyone does - and sometimes I really should work harder on focusing on the positive – but sometimes I cannot seem to figure out how. Sometimes it seems hard for the positive to outweigh some of the negative, sad spells spurting out of my head. I woke up sad yesterday, tried to have a productive day, but by the end of it I was feeling worse, sadder, and uglier – started crying again and posted my sadness on facebook. Today part of me feels like I should delete that post, but that would delete everyone’s comments below it and I appreciate those comments and don’t wish to get rid of them so…

The night before last I had trouble falling asleep, was lying in bed thinking, started thinking about how I have not been to a concert in a long time, and how the last times I had been to any were with my ex-husband (who is no longer friends with me – and his brother who is no longer friends with me – and another friend of ours who is no longer friends with me). Granted, that is certainly not the end of the world; I can’t really afford to be going to concerts these days anyway; but I started thinking about how my ex-husband had good taste in music; we shared some tastes in that regard; we attended lots of fun concerts together, including several Interpol concerts, I put an Interpol song on a wedding cd I made for us, now I have not even listened to Interpol for over a year even though I didn’t stop liking them.

We also saw Sonic Youth, Flaming Lips, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Le Tigre, Rasputina, Neko Case and more (whose names I either can't think of or can't remember off the top of my head). Now I feel like I have nobody to attend concerts with (nobody around here who has similar taste in music; and nowhere in these parts that has concerts other than cover bands) although I could certainly be wrong and anyway, as mentioned above, I can’t really afford concerts at this time anyway.

Overall I am happy and lucky and delighted by my new space and fine with being by myself, but every once in a while I feel sad and alone and then sometimes my ugly feelings quick in too.

My asinine ugly feelings about turning into an unappealing middle aged ick-factor who has lost muscle, is suddenly getting white hairs galore, and is back to getting zits (stress, hormones, or am I just a teenage elder)? Unpopular, sometime borderline antisocial, and sometime pissed off at myself because of that stuff.

It bothers me that I don’t know how to feel about love anymore (even though part of me still craves love, I don’t really trust it) - and those uncertain mixed feelings about love seem to be fusing with my passionate feelings – and so I’ve gone from someone who felt incredibly passionate about poetry and art and other poetic expressions for many YEARS into someone who is now not sure if that passion is as strong - or if anything about me is strong.

I got upset this past week because I recently agreed to read and respond to another poet’s full-length manuscript plus participate in a female poet’s interview and both of those things are taking me much longer than they would have used to.

Although I am happy and excited about my new place, I still have lots of unpacking and organizing to do here and have not read or written any new poetry this entire month and that bothers me too.

Anyway a lot more specific things seemed to be spurting out of my head just a short while ago, but I guess I didn’t get them written right before they disappeared, so I guess this is my short version.

I am quite happy that I have met some fabulous, wonderful new artsy friends in the last year (especially in Pittsburgh; yay – plus meeting one of my poet friends in Florida just last month; yay), but I still have sad spurts of feeling alone and unloved and unliked and ugly and weak.

I will probably try to deal with this kind of subject matter in the poetry interview I am in the midst of working on.