that diamond that shines in the dark

I just came back from the psychiatrist/psychotherapist I recently hooked up with. After a few appointments, I am still struggling to catch her up so to speak with my story. For instance, going inpatient never came up until this session.

But what she's still trying to wrap her head around is how I am so happy so often given my life circumstances. She still does not get it, we're not yet on the same page.

I realize, driving home, that there are many ways things happen. And my being helped by her has to do with 1) the pills, 2) the insights she can suggest once she understands my life better, and 3) the insights I realize from trying to explain myself to her.

Of course that's part of it. I had forgotten for a moment. That there's different ways therapy can work. To have an empathetic witness can be very cathartic. To have a cognitive reframing of unfounded beliefs also a major mental shift. But also, simply the process of trying to explain your life to someone else forces you to figure it out yourself as you hear yourself talk.

Which is the very same reason, in many ways, that the blog can be a tool for survival, and for growth. It can be the process wherein we realize our own path, and our way out of the woods, as we try to understand these crazy lives we're in and what the hell is going on in our own selves.

But I also realize that my challenge in getting her to understand why I am still happy despite it all, is the same challenge with all the people at work. In lives far less emotionally traumatic, they are more often unhappy. And I once was too.

So how do you make somebody understand, who has not themself been through HELL, that the greatest joy lies on the other side of despair. In that place the colors are brighter than in "normal" life. Not a lot, but a little. There is a different kind of joy for something when you have had to fight for it, when you know at every moment how ephemeral and precious it is.

But also, having been forced to deal with more than I could handle, I had to change. I had to find places and methods and meanings that no sane stranger would take the trouble to find through those dark and mucky depths. Desperation is a strange thing. Hardship too. If you survive, if you can keep on fighting, you will hope to find that rare diamond. It is strange. I do not recommend you induce it. But maybe some of you can understand what others do not.

There is a diamond in the dark if you are brave enough to keep on fighting.

Maybe someone out there can also understand?