Ashes to ashes.

My good friend, Erica, asked me if I'd ever thought about medicating myself for my anxiety.  "No," I answered.  "Wait, yes.  Yes.  But my therapist has never suggested meds, so...." 

"Oh," she responded.  "Must be a Kaiser thing.  They want to medicate everyone."

I started to wonder how my life would be different if I didn't panic over which loofa to get in Target, or how buying a nail polish that is almost purple might change who I am.  I send myself into near mental breakdown over what it means to have a night stand that is clean, or one that is cluttered, because I wonder about what existential message my night stand is sending about me.  I also find it impossible sometimes to have a normal conversation with a stranger, and sometimes calibrate my sense of self worth on how weird I think I sounded to said stranger.

And Guilt.  Anxiety's angry, somber older brother, for whom nothing is ever good enough.  Guilt is directionless and exists out of reasonable governing bodies, without rules or limit to its capacity to spread like a virus through any harmless thought or action.


*                  *                   *

So.

My dear friend Erica and I shared Thai food over lunch today, Ash Wednesday.  Today is the day that starts 40 long days and nights for the devout and/or ambitious everywhere.  I considered giving up Thai food for Lent, but since Lent is all about purifying and becoming closer to God -- and not just the magnified suffering we endure when we give up something we're attached to -- I didn't see how giving up the one food I could eat (and sometimes do) every other day would help bring me any closer to God.  It's a comfort I can rely on, and there aren't many these days.

Of course, that's just my Pagan interpretation.  Monks and ascetics everywhere seem to live in a constant state of Lent, and it holds an attraction for me whose origin I can't quite identify.

And this is important, because purity, being closer to God -- or Truth, Light, Infinite Love or The Divine -- is exactly what I'm in the market for right now. 

It's possible twelve of you just stopped reading because I mentioned the word "God."  That's just fine.  I judge, too, and misinterpret, and it's gloriously human to do so.

But this Lent (and it's my first real thoughtful awareness of this sacred time), I'm not giving up Thai food or reality TV (although I'm sure my IQ would go up and I'd have a cleaner house).  I'm going to do my very best to give up a mental process I cling to, as my friend Erica put it, for control: Guilt. 

Control because guilt is imposed, not naturally-occurring.  Either other people impose it on us, or we impose it on ourselves.  (Remorse is more natural, I think, and springs up from genuine understanding of wrongs we eventually aim to right.)  Guilt?  It's like emotional flagellation used to keep us in line, and we miraculously feel guilty for a myriad of things that are out of our control or have nothing to do with us.  What a prison.

I see a lot of Thai food in my near future....