Dirt and Depression; Birds and Distractions

     Last summer I experimented with not being on any psychiatric medication.  Sometimes I felt okay but at other times I felt like I was in the depths of despair and terror.  Tears would run down my face for hours at a time.  Sometimes when I felt like this I would think to myself, "I need to cover myself in mud."  I'm not sure where this urge came from.  I felt that doing this would help me to feel better.  So, twice, during periods of extreme depression, I went off to the woods and found some mud in a dried up creek bed and smeared it on my face and arms.  Then I hung out in the woods for a while, washed it off in a creek and went back home.  I did feel better.  Not exhilarated, but tolerable.  Recently I started seeing articles on Facebook about how dirt has microbes in it that help depression, so my seemingly bizarre intuitive treatment for depression has now been confirmed by scientific research.  You can read about some of the research here:  Antidepressant Microbes In Soil: How Dirt Makes You Happy.

     On the second occasion of administering this "treatment", my family had been screaming at me about some things (I don't remember what) so I went to the woods not only to cover myself in mud but also to get away from my family.  I was hanging out in the creek bed after I had applied the mud to my face and arms wondering what to do next.  I was standing up and holding very still.  I think I was waiting for or asking for some kind of sign when a little bird flew up to me.  It looked me in the eye, and furiously chirped at me over and over again.  I felt kind of sad, I didn't understand why it would be fussing at me.  Apparently I was doing something wrong.  Was it upset because I had put mud on my face and arms?  Was that something that a bird would even notice?  Was it upset because I was in its territory?  I sat down and held still for a while.  When I got up to move, the bird came back, looked me in the eye, and furiously fussed at me again.
     "Even in the woods I am not welcome," I thought, and felt very sad.  I sat down again.  I wanted to stay in that creek bed for a while.  I didn't want to go back to my house.  I had thought that I would be welcome in the woods and that I would have been able to get away from being fussed at.  Not so.   I got up again a little while later and that bird came back, looked me in the eye, and made it's best effort to let me know that it was still pretty angry at me for some reason or another.
     "I do not belong here," I thought.  "Apparently, this bird does not want me here.  Maybe it has a nest nearby."  I went away saddened.  My family didn't want me at my house and the bird didn't want me hanging out around the creek bed.  I walked down the side of the hill where the dry creek bed ran into the creek.  I washed the mud from my face and arms.  I did feel a little better than I had before I had applied the mud.  I sat down by the creek with my back against a tree to meditate.
     "Finally," I thought. "some peace and quiet."  Just a few minutes later, I heard my husband walking through the woods.
     "Sarah!  Sarah!" he yelled over and over again.
      I didn't  want to talk to him just then.  I just wanted to meditate.  Suddenly it occurred to me: wherever I go there might be noise and distractions outside of me that I can't control.  What I can control, though, is my attitude toward those distractions and irritations.  The world is not going to stop around me so that I can meditate but I can stop and meditate anyway.  So I continued to sit and to meditate and it went pretty well.  I felt relaxed and peaceful.  I felt kind of happy.  When I went back to my home everyone had calmed down.  Nobody was yelling at me.  I talked through the situation some with my husband and we resolved some of the things that we had been arguing about.