Pedestals.

Osho:  Sickness is unnatural, sadness is unnatural, misery is unnatural -- there must be a cause to it, but just rejoicing in life, in the small things of life is a natural thing. There is no question of finding any cause.

When I am in the deepest depressive moments, I consistently push people away with all my feeble might.  "Go!  Be happy! Stay away from me."  And, during these times, I am consistently negative about myself; about my relationships, and mostly about myself.  I know that...

But I don't want to inflict anything like what my mother's illness has done to our family, on anyone else.  When I am in these severely depressed dips I am terrified I will pull the people who love me, (the people I love!), down with this sinking ship, and I want to cut everyone loose.  Everyone.  Even Michael and Stella. They deserve better.

These are the only two situations possible, and you are in a sad situation. Everybody may know about you -- who you are -- but you yourself are completely oblivious of your transcendence, of your real nature, of your authentic being. This is the only sadness in life. You can find many excuses, but the real sadness is this: you don't know who you are. How can a person be happy not knowing who he is, not knowing from where he comes, not knowing where he is going? A thousand and one problems arise because of this basic self-ignorance.

I'm tired.  I'm really sad and tired.  One day after Easter, I became so exhausted I felt like someone tranquilized me.  I might as well be in a coma. I would prefer to be in a coma and do no harm--Not to the people I love... Not to myself.  See,  yesterday I thought of calling John and telling him that Teresa and Sam would make a great couple. He said he felt like he wanted to die, often. I wanted to say, "Let's go."  

I feel like I'm trying to swim with cinder blocks chained to my body. Why do I keep swimming? Why do my limbs keep struggling to keep me afloat?

God, because part of me knows I'm not crazy... I know I'm not crazy all the time!  I always keep swimming, and I always feel better.

But I feel like I'm a real bitch in the meantime.

And I am sure people are seeing what I saw happen to my mother, in me... She was my beautiful- angel-hero.  Little kids often see perfection in their mothers.  Moms can do anything.  They wrap their angel wings around us.  My mother was infallible, and strong, and my lifeline when I couldn't handle things life was throwing at me...  And she left.  And that image of her disappeared.  The person I love died.  Maybe she's in there somewhere...  But I haven't seen her in a really long time.  I miss her.  I miss her. I wonder if people are starting to miss me, too.

Sadness has come. It has happened to you; it is not you. The moment you remember this, suddenly you will see a distance arising between you and the sadness. It does not affect you anymore. When you lose awareness, it affects you; when you gain awareness, there is a distance. The more awareness rises to a higher peak, the more the distance becomes greater and greater. A moment comes when you are so far away from your sadness that it is as if it is no longer there. The same has to be done with happiness also. It will be difficult because one wants to cling to happiness. But if you want to cling to happiness, you are sowing the seeds of unhappiness.

I was so deeply attached to my mom, from my earliest memories, that I don't always know how to keep on living without her. In my darkest hours, I feel like I need her.  I need my mommy.

And, if you have ever admired someone, and put them on a pedestal,  I am sure you remember that exact moment when you saw all their imperfections and saw the smooth, lovely, marble of their beautiful pedestal, flake, and crack, and fall apart.  My awakening was a long time coming.

Maybe the only people we should ever idolize can never be too close to us.  We need heroes that aren't broken.  If we get too close, we see we were wrong...  They aren't magical, or beautiful at all... And it's tough to swallow.

I would love to sit on a pedestal, set in stone, in my most perfect state; that I would be untouchable by depression, or emotional pain, rejection, or criticism of others.  I'd love to sit above my own self-degradation.  Why can't we sit on pedestals of our own making and feel happy and perfect and amazing?  Why do we let others change who we are, and how we feel about ourselves?  

Everyone tells us to take the bad things in life and make them lessons, but aren't some things just... bad?  Can't some things break us?  We must all have a breaking point.  And we crumble... Or the pedestal crumbles from under us...  And then we're just sitting there in the cloud of marble dust, wondering what the Hell just happened and why.

When you are like a rock, sitting dead with your sadness, nursing your sadness, nobody is with you. Nobody can be with you. There simply comes a gap between you and life. Then whatsoever you are doing, you have to depend on your energy source. It will be dissipated, you are wasting your energy, you are being drained by your own nonsense. But one thing is there, that when you are sad and negative you will feel more ego. When you are happy, blissful, ecstatic, you will not feel the ego. When you are happy and ecstatic there is no I, and the other disappears. You are bridged with existence, not broken apart -- you are together.