difficult times

"[T]imes are always difficult... for those living through them."

The quote above is from the book I'm reading right now, and has been echoing in my head for two days now.  I have been struggling for some time with writing a post that explains why.  Here is my dilemma:  For a blogger, I am oddly private.  Whenever I am going through something that is tough on me emotionally, my tendency is to withdraw.  Not just a little bit, but almost completely. 

For example, when I was going through my divorce -- actually, for about a year leading up to it and a year afterward -- I cut most contact with many of the people in my life who were important to me.  With a few very limited exceptions, people did not know what was going on.  People did not even know I was unhappy in my relationship/marriage.  As you can imagine, this pissed off a number of friends who I was supposedly really close to.  They felt left out, unimportant to me, etc. 

This was decidedly not true.  I just have trouble talking about things that are deeply personal, with anyone.  I prefer to ruminate, and let them sit, and work out for myself how I want to handle them.  I don't want advice, or input.  Often, I just plain don't want to talk about it -- I spend time with others in order to take a break from the issues that are weighing on my mind.  I would rather write about problems than share them with another person.  I certainly don't want to be asked about my problems -- if I want to talk about them, I will bring them up.  I feel burdened by keeping people up-to-date on all the latest developments.  When I'm going through something difficult, the last thing I want to deal with is that additional burden of making sure other people are kept apprised.  This is hard for people to accept; many people do not understand it, and my explanations just seem to make them more irritated.

And so, maybe you can see why I have been having a hard time writing something that is fit for public consumption lately.  Mostly, they end up like this post -- vague.

Because times are difficult.  I am going through things that are making me take a hard look at the person that I am, the person that I thought I was, and the person that I want to be.  But, times are always difficult for those living through them.  Whenever I got discouraged as a child, my mom always said to me "This, too, shall pass."   Both of my yoga teachers also reminded me of this, using difficult poses as an analogy -- the discomfort is thirty seconds, and then it is over, as are the trials and difficulties of our life.  Perhaps that is true, but I don't happen to find it very comforting.

And so, I find myself wondering lately, when is it time to stop thinking of the "difficult time" as a temporary setback in the rest of life, which shall pass, and start to realize that the difficult time is not temporary at all: it actually is life?