Heaven/Hell

I have been reading portions of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and battling boredom induced depression. I have been feeling ill, and my thoughts have become as complicated as my life as a teacher, a full-time graduate student, and a wife. I have begun to feel myself slipping into an unfamiliar consciousness. Breath by breath I have become someone I do not recognize. So, Milton and I began a journey to seek and find the image of me I am comfortable with calling me….

(Side note: It isn’t easy loving yourself and being unpleased with your circumstances at the same time)

Not too long after the journey began I read, “The mind is its own place, and in itself/Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven” (lines 254-255), and was stricken with a thought so simple I had no choice but to pause and ponder…A Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven? …Which am I doing?
Truthfully, I haven’t been able to come to a conclusion. Depending upon the time and the day, the answer is subject to change. And it is my involuntary submission to change, necessary or unnecessary, that shocks me. I am torn between being shocked that I am shocked by myself, and being shocked that I thought I couldn’t be shocked by myself. The world of thought and boredom…leads me to believe that the mind on Earth osculates back and forth from heaven and hell regardless of its actual location.