Dormant.

I've been dormant.  Writing dormant.  For the past few weeks.

There is the here and there.  The mundanity of life.

But nothing profound.

It is grey outside and rain comes in fits and starts and pitters on the glass.  The television drones.

I've been growing my hair for too long now and I find it only annoying.  Nothing spiritual.  No change.  I'm still me, just with annoying hair now, instead of totally weird hair.

I got a new pair of sweatpants at Old Navy the other day.  The kind of sweatpants I always envied on other mothers.  The kind you can wear and still look like you're relatively put together.  I've been wearing them two days now.  I wonder how many days they can go without washing and still look "put together".

I've been taking St. John's Wort and trying to fight this depression crap.  It works some days and other days, like today, it just... doesn't.  I don't feel like doing anything.

I watch tea-water swish around at the bottom of my cup and try to ignore the feeling of void in my stomach.

On the dreary days, it is sometimes easier for me.  But not this time.

Today I had hoped to take the kids outside.  To go for a walk in the sunshine.  To go running until it hurt in a bottomless sort of way.  But it is hard to be motivated to leave the house on dreary days that are also freezing.

I ran out to the mailbox.  Came back in the house.

A few days ago a former student of mine confessed that she had decided not to pursue a career as an actress because she didn't find herself "pretty enough".  I was stunned, because she really is very beautiful.  Of course I told her that it was nonsense and that she was gorgeous but somehow my words are not enough in situations like these and I never know what to say.

This isn't the first time.

Not the only young woman who has looked in the mirror and seen less than.  I want to take them years into the future and show them pictures of themselves now.  Show them how beautiful they look.  Show them how lovely and young and downright enviable.  I want to show them themselves at eighty and another sort of loveliness.  I want to show them the girls they wish they were first thing in the morning, before teeth brushing and hair combing.  I want to show them eating disorders and I want to just hold them and let them cry.

I hate this perfectionism in how we look.

This dwelling on the physical.

I note it as I look at my annoying hair and check my butt in the mirror with my new Old Navy sweatpants.

I note it somewhere in the bottom of my tea cup.

Not the root of everything, but part of it.

A few days ago a young boy (17 years old) died in his sleep.  No real reason.  He just died and there was nothing anyone could do about it.  Someone posted the quote from C.S. Lewis "You don't have a soul.  You are a soul.  You have a body."

I wish we could remember this more often.

I wish we could grab hold of it and look for our beauty there.  See like God sees.  Just for a moment.  Throw away our prideful selfish longings and see ourselves as we are.  As we can be.  As God sees us.

Excuse my somewhat incoherent stream of consciousness this afternoon.

It's time for more tea.