A friend of mine posted a quote on Facebook today. "The only difference between a good day and a bad day is your attitude and your belief." I'm not naming the friend or the source of the quote, because a.) I don't want her to feel bad about what is, really, a generally harmless quote, and b.) It's really not the point of this post. But as someone who struggles with depression in general and who has been going through a particularly ugly episode lately (ah, how I love the change in seasons--NOT), I have to say that I these kinds of "it's all in the attitude" quotes crawl under my skin. They're not quite triggers, but almost. What a lot of non-mentally ill people take for granted is, in fact, a fair amount of control over their attitudes. And it's what sometimes even the best meaning friends fail to understand about the average chronic depressive or anxious person. We don't have those controls. Or, rather, they're locked away from
The back of the house is where theater's black magic happens. It's a place where empires rise and fall, where people love and hate, and the place where gods live and die. And yet, like the man in the movie said, it all turns out all right in the end. It's a mystery. Which is another word for miracle.