You Are Not the Voice in My Head

The older I get, the more I think that problems stem from issues of identity, and that solutions to them do not lie in psychology but rather philosophy, and more important, spirituality. The spirituality of which I write isn't to be confused with religion and god. I use the word spirituality as a term to reference the relationship one has with that which is bigger than one's self, the relationship one has with The Divine, which is to say What Has Come Before and What Will Come After, the relationship one has with the concept of life across time.

Art (you being an artist) is one of the ways in which we connect with our spirituality, with our relationship with The Divine.

My first response to this was a genuine 'Wow'. Reading this helped me realize how disjointed I have been with my spirituality as of late and how that has affected me and (arguably) more importantly, my art. Last year, I was very involved in my beliefs and ideas about things like the afterlife, the untangible way we have relationships with others, and other things that are not invisible but only present in another facet of our minds and other realms. The play I put up for StacNight last year was very much influenced by these ideas, along with a confusion of whether I was doing enough in my day to day life not only physically but mentally.
I've been subconsciously trying to decode my Koan for months now. At this point, I think it's 'Is it Enough?'. This is how I've approached a lot of things, and even if it isn't my Koan, it's a question that has been present in my life for quite some time. The Koan, for those of you who don't know, is a very mental, very untangible mess of not only thinking but feeling. The relationship between thinking and feeling is how I personally define philosophy. The head versus the heart, only it's not a fight looking for a winner.
As I've said, my relationship with all of this train of thought had been lost for months. Now that I feel that it's back, I feel more comfortable explaining what it was like without it. I think a good place to start is by saying that my relationship with the afterlife is very integral to who I am and how I view and percieve things. Believing in an afterlife helps me come to terms with the life around me. I've said before that I'm afraid of endings, and I suppose that's related to this. While I don't think of myself as a religious person, I do view myself as agnostic. I believe there's something out there, something that lets us cling to existence and something that gives me a reason to keep clinging. But, for awhile, my views shifted towards atheism. The idea that there is nothing scares me the most, so while I didn't want to believe it, I couldn't stop myself. I didn't have a reason to keep clinging. But I still did.
While mental health definitely holds a role in being suicidal, I feel like it was only gas for me. It fueled, but it wasn't the first spark that lit the flame. It was my loss of belief. In September, I cut ties with one of my best friends. And while it was the right thing to do, it was still hard. I felt like this person put me down and made me feel unreasonably like less of a person. Things were happening in my life already at that point and feeling this way the last straw. Why would a power that I had already accepted was bigger than me only make me feel smaller? So I squashed the higher ruler and put myself on the same level as everyone else. Somehow, that only made me worse.
People make it sound like going down in this fashion is a spiral, but it was slower than that. It was like when you're on an escalator, and you can see that you're slowly but surely going down, so you watch as the levels change. I, for one, have always slowly tipped my head up as I go down, keeping my eyes steady on where I once was, only to look down quickly before I realize I need to step off. I find it interesting how when I go back up on an escalator, instead of looking where I'm coming from, I only look up at where I'm going to be.
Putting myself on the same level as others took away that drive to better myself. I realize now. I need something to look up to. I also need something bigger than me to feel protected while I'm doing it. I rely on the positivity of others and while I know it presents issues on other levels, I've realized it's just who I am. While I don't feel exactly like the person I was last year, I feel more versed and justified in why I feel the way I feel. I know I'm not a healthy person, but I'm not so afraid of it anymore. And right now, that's enough.
NOTE: I feel like it's important not only for others to have the ability to know how I feel, for instance writing on this blog instead of my personal one, but for me to have a positive outlet to express these feelings. Some of the things I write on here are important for me to be able to say to those around me everyday. While I always invite to ponder, I'm not demanding a response to every single thing. I, for one, know how hard it can be to talk about depression without putting your own experiences into it and that can be hard to talk about. I feel like it's just easier to understand my thought process as a whole with these pieces of background information, so that's why I include them.