I hear a story about a behavioral experiment that was conducted in a lab:

There is a dog in a cage. Scientists rig one side of the cage so that every time the dog goes to that side of the cage she will get an electrical shock.

Soon enough, the dog learns to stay on the other side of the cage.

Within a few weeks, the scientists re-wire the cage so that she’ll get shocked on the side she was conditioned to stay on pain-free. As predicted, the dog learns to lay down on the opposite, formerly electrified side of the cage.

“They told me that life could be just what I made it—
Life could be fashioned and worn like a gown;
I, the designer; mine the decision
Whehter to wear it with bonnet or crown...
—Nan Terrel Reed, 1935

When I finally get the guts up to start posting, it springs from a need that is greater than my fear. I’m desperate, searching, drowning, spinning...and I need all the help I can get if I am to survive. Literally. As a sole supporter of myself I must not let the Zombie-me take over. Zombie-me is fighting hard for control, and ‘spinning’ is whirring around on a downward spiral, not a fair match at all.

“First start with doing what is necessary. Then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
--St. Francis of Assisi

You’re in such pain right now that you feel like you’ve just gone through surgery without anesthesia. Someone has removed your vital organs and you are gutted. Weak. You feel like a ghost wandering in the fog. Every step feels like sandpaper scraping against your raw skin.

“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference.”

You are in a fog that is so thick it feels like slogging through peanut butter. Every single step is sticky, like quicksand, like tar...all smeary and dark. You do not know what to do, what to feel, how you will ever find your way out. Again.

“That which is to give light
Must endure burning.”
---Viktor Frankel

One day you wake up and you’re a skeleton.
You want to paste back on the substance that was you but you can’t find it in the ashes.
You reach in and pull out dust.
This is when you begin to understand that this is somehow the truth you were meant to find as a little girl who just wanted to be loved. This experience, this dance with the devil that scaled you down to the bones happened because it needed to. All of the things that brought you to the dance floor in the first place must be examined, turned over, and illuminated. You so want to find the light. You’ve been lost in the dark for so long...

This is when the little voice whispers, wimpers, mumbles, rumbles.
This is when you rise...