Dear Gregory:

Thank you for your appreciation and kind words! I will reply attentively tomorrow (not focused enough this hot Thurs afternoon).

Anita

Hi Peter:

“Camus defines the absurd as the tension between our deep longing for meaning and the universe’s silence… He insists on staying with the absurd… refusing to resolve it or fix it… refusing to resolve it or fix (the tension).”-

As in to accept the things we cannot change (the tension) and the courage to change the things we can (the resistance ?

Hi Peter:

You wrote, “My family would reject most of what I have written and not understood.”- They would—because they already did..?

That line felt so familiar. When those closest to us can’t witness our inner world, the ache folds in deeper.

Then you quietly offered: “(I sleep a little better and handle panic attacks a little better)”- I don’t remember you mentioning panic attacks before. And placing it in parentheses—it struck me. Maybe it’s something you want quietly known, not spotlighted. Still, I saw it. And I’m glad—truly—that sleep and those waves are just a little softer now.

“I have lived in that space waiting for someone to paint the brushstrokes…”- Me too.

“If only I could see myself…”- When a child isn’t seen for too long, darkness settles inside. Living gets put on pause until someone kind enough notices the child-in-the-dark and gently turns on the light. The child doesn’t even know where the switch is—it’s too dark to look.

Back on July 17, 2018—exactly seven years ago- you wrote: “For the longest time I was depressed about being depressed… Today I might say I have a relationship with depression. I no longer fear it.”-

I was diagnosed with major depression, prescribed with SSRIs for 16-17 years straight (1997-2013). What helped lift me was the slow practice of Expressing the Suppressed—the stream-of-consciousness journaling that flows in my threads (and here)- because so much stayed buried for so long.

Surviving in the dark for so many, many years means suppressing not just feeling, but self. Survival is not thriving. Thriving is Expressing.

I just noticed that you submitted a new post in my own thread: “The illusion isn’t that the painting isn’t real but that it forgets it’s on the canvas.”- Brilliant, Peter. Truly. Your stream flows with depth, and your brilliance lives in the current.

So I have a question—maybe it’s naïve, or child-like: If emotions are the brushstrokes, and the canvas is what holds it all—always there— Is the canvas like a steady, unchanging parent? A presence that doesn’t leave? A super-parent? A God?

Oh.. and your newer post:… our descriptions point to the experience, but aren’t the experience itself—like a painting of a sunset versus standing in it.

A part of us is beyond thought. We remember the wholeness, the stillness.. even through words that can’t quite carry it…

The stillness we craved for, for too long… A safe place where we can rest..?

Anita 🤍

Dear Ada: I am looking forward to reading your latest posts and reply tomorrow.

Anita

Hi Q:

Thank you for sharing all of this. It takes real courage to open up when you’re hurting like this, and it’s clear that you’re trying your best—through grief, through setbacks, through doubt. I just want to say: your pain makes sense. You’ve been carrying a lot, and you’re still showing up for yourself. That matters.

Losing someone while also feeling stuck in your career is a heavy mix. You’re not alone in feeling like one affects the other. And the thoughts you mentioned—the ones that tell you it was all your fault—aren’t the truth, even though they feel real. They’re coming from sadness, not fact.

Getting rejected after trying so hard hurts. And crying doesn’t mean you’re weak—it means you care. That hope you still have about reconnecting is human. You’re allowed to feel that and still choose what helps you heal. You already said it beautifully: for things to work later, you both need space to grow now.

Choosing no contact isn’t easy, but it’s not about giving up. It’s about giving yourself a chance to breathe, to rebuild. The fact that you’re aware of your emotional habits, and trying not to act on every impulse, shows strength—even if it doesn’t feel like it.

One step at a time, Q. You don’t have to fix everything right now. You’re grieving, rebuilding, and learning. That’s a lot—and you’re still here. Keep applying. Keep showing up. One day you’ll read this and see how far you’ve come.

Sending you warmth, A stranger who believes in you 🤍

Anita

That’s wonderful to hear. Zenith! I will be away from the computer for most of this hot, hot day

Hi Peter:

“Yes, I know that nothingness inside. That hollow, alone space.”- As I read this, I wanted to fix that nothingness inside you. It makes me smile to think that—even for a few seconds—I had the idea in my mind that I have that kind of power… ha-ha.

“There are times when the mystery feels too vast, and I long for something more tangible. The heart aches, even as it knows. The soul whispers ‘yes,’ but the body feels tired, small, and unseen.”- You write so poetically, it makes my brain say W.O.W! I don’t remember ever reading something from you as profound, so personal, so raw. Real.

I just had the image of boy-Peter looking up into the vast sky where God is supposed to reside, praying for help with the ache inside—a prayer that wasn’t answered. So Peter the boy felt tired, small, and unseen.

And I remembered myself as a girl… walking alone in the evening or night (it was dark), looking up at the sky full of stars and praying to the stars, begging them: “Help me! Please help me!” The stars twinkled, but no help came.

“As I mentioned earlier, the heart still aches even when the mind ‘knows.’”- Again (and I almost smile again), for a moment I thought maybe I could say something to you that would bridge the gap between spiritual knowing and emotional reality. Between the mind and the heart.

What I’ve been doing lately—through my stream-of-consciousness journaling (in my thread) and even here in this reply—is to build a bridge between my intellectual understanding (such as “I am not a bad person”) and my emotional reality… to truly feel and believe what I claim to know.

I say “claim to know” because this kind of information is useless unless it is in-the-body.

“And no, this doesn’t make me less needy of human connection. If anything, it might deepen the ache. To be candid, I sometimes wonder if writing about these things is a way to avoid that ache, but it doesn’t. It just brings me closer to it.”- I think I shared this with you before—that I thought that writing about mystery, belonging, nonduality might be a way to protect yourself from the ache of longing for human connection.

Your philosophical and poetic reflections could act as a shield—elegant and thoughtful—that sits between you and raw vulnerability.

But you say this shield, if it was one, didn’t numb the ache—it intensified it. And maybe that’s because connection matters.

“When I see bombs being dropped, I am That. When I see a child starving, I am That. When I see someone holding that child, I am That too…”- Powerful.

When I see my mother, in my mind’s eye… I see me? That feels uncomfortable. Wrong. And yet… it just occurred to me: her suspiciousness toward people lives in me still, and I’m working to resolve it. Just last Saturday, I hurt two honest, good people—with that suspiciousness.

So… when I see myself, I see my mother. But I don’t want to.

“I understand when someone might say what’s the point then if in the end that ache and that experience of nothingness inside remains. I don’t have an answer for that.”- The ache softens when someone sees us in it.

I’m having this image of a blank canvas full of dark colors—representing the ache—and I’m nowhere to be found on it. The ache feels heavy, unbearable… until someone, with a few brushstrokes, paints me onto that canvas. What a relief: there I am. I didn’t know I was there.

You submitted a second post while I was writing this—a meditation.

What I’m taking from it this morning: When the intellect quiets, it isn’t the mind shutting off—it’s the mind becoming still, like a pond with no ripples. All the analyzing, labeling, and conceptualizing drop away. No need to name the feeling. No urge to solve the mystery. Just stillness. Presence. Breath. And when the intellect rests, other ways of knowing wake up.

What might wake up for me right now? Just now, I noticed the sound of a plane moving past, the far-off hum of traffic, birds singing. I hadn’t heard any of it until the ripples of my mind quieted down.

With warmth, Anita 🤍