Useless advice

Sorry to have taken so long to share with you, but as you may have gathered from recent postings, my get-up-and-go has got up and went, as they saying so often goes.

Yesterday I caught the last few episodes of Anohana, a short 11-ep anime series currently only available to paid Crunchyroll customers (you can check out the first four for free, if you're interested).

It's really quite heart-wrenchingly beautiful. The characters have known each other since childhood, they grew up together in a Little-Rascals-esque clubhouse-cum-society. They care deeply about each other, some of them love—or would dearly love to love—one another, and to be loved that passionately in return... but there's way more than enough unrequited love to go around. At some point, we (the audience) realize that every single character is in denial about something very significant, doing their best not to confront what they themselves know they need to confront, but oh boy do they ever not want to confront it. Or themselves. Sound familiar?

An amazing article on Salon.com, "Where is my true path in life," full of noble sentiments like "You also need to be a secret warrior, plotting to take what is yours" and "Inside you is a vital force that is mad with desire to be realized."

Seth Godin's always tought-provoking blog sets forward encouraging words about  "Getting over ourselves."

A multipunch combination from The Universe, offering me, if not all of us, encouragement and challenging us to act.

And somehow... right now, whether maybe I need to hear all this or not, I don't want to even hear this. I just want to be left alone. Because I'll sit up and think about how I'd like to do something creative even, maybe... and then I have to lie down and go to bed. Perhaps then even to sleep, for a while. Hard to get over yourself if you're being sent to bed and pull the covers over yourself because you're so damned cold.

Anime offers encouragement. Salon offers encouragement. Seth Godin offers encouragement. A lot of other people offer encouragement too, but they use the most useless advice ever offered: "Well, just get over it. You really need to put this behind you."

Well, if I could do it that easily, don't you think I would have done it by now? You think this is FUN??? (Actually, sometimes, in a very twisted way, it is or at least is seen as more pleasant than change... but not now. Hardly, now. Not even a tiny bit, right now.)

A perfect cue to launch into a full-blown rage-filled screed... if I didn't need to go lie down and maybe go back to sleep. Which, if it keeps the screeds down, I supposed is indeed a gift of M.S., but... sigh. Bed.