For the first time I'm really struggling to write a joy post. I'm not feeling it. I'm not feeling like writing. I'm not feeling joy. I'm just really depressed. Normally I live in anxiety (which seems to be my natural state of being) that keeps me fueled and moving but even that subsided and I was left with nothing but sadness, sorrow, depression. I tend to have anxiety even when depressed...high functioning depression...which just keeps me pushing myself to perform, to work, to do, to live, to smile, to survive, despite how I might actually feel... ignoring how I feel so I can keep going. Because I've never felt it was really a choice...I had to survive. It's been coming on slowly, this deep sorrow, like a balloon losing it's air...until this week when I just went flat. So I sat with not feeling joy...and therein is a joy of sorts, the joy of being my authentic self, although it really doesn't feel joyful.
This past few weeks have been tough for multiple reasons I won't go into because it's not the point of the post. I ended up just watching movies all day yesterday and trying to ignore social media with all the politics and religious drama that add to my depression.The last movie I cried through the entire thing. The Sea of Trees. It felt like the culmination of a world of tears that is all I can see right now. It's about the very real place of what is known as the suicide forest in Japan. The Aokigahara Forest which is at the base of Mt. Fuji not too far from Tokyo, a place people make the trek to in order to end their life. Apparently it's the most popular suicide destination in the world with likely 100 or so people a year ending their lives there...sadly Japan has a very high suicide rate.
The movie was actually about an unhappy couple. The wife dies tragically and the husband can't go on without her, he realizes how much he loved her and is racked with guilt for not treating her better. He reads about the forest and flies there to take his life and then meets another man who is there to take his life as well but who changes his mind and can't find his way out.
It was a really sad movie but at the same time it was beautiful. The forest was beautiful, their relationships were beautiful, both with his wife and this man...because they were real, full of love and hate and conflict...life is hard for everyone. On that one common thread we can all relate. The two men lost in the forest are able to share their deepest thoughts and connect with one another in their struggle and then they try to save each other and it all becomes about surviving and getting out. I won't tell you the rest.
It's dramatic and hard to watch, just like life, just like my life, just like my relationships...and probably like yours, too...because we are all so much alike despite our differences. The metaphors in the movie were huge. Life is like the suicide forest where we struggle to find our way, to survive, to find someone to relate to, to love, to love us, to be real with, to be accepted. Then life becomes worth living and we want to keep moving forward because survival is more than just survival when we develop connections and heal and help each other. And yet nothing is really ever solved because with every relationship and connection comes conflict and tragedy and sorrow also.
I was left drained in every possible way after the movie. And therein is my joy. Life is full of it, full of joy and shit and everything in between. Even in the darkest of places, like the Suicide Forest. RIP to the sacred souls who give in to the struggle. What a beautiful movie and tribute to this sacred space where so many laid their sorrows to rest. I am in awe. Joy engulfs me despite the depth of sorrow existing in the world, because they really can exist at exactly the same time.
