HOW DOES IT FEEL, WHAT IS IT LIKE TO FEEL PROPERLY DEPRESSED?
By Peter Smith
A Vital Subject Of Which Their Seems No Easy Way To Describe
Abandoned, left alone in my own home, I have no home.
To wallow in that dark hole that brings a strange comfort but hides you from your soul. The abyss, silent and still. You can’t move, or you don’t move, you’re not sure which, the answer never came or if it did they are the same. You don’t open your mail, food has gone stale. Can’t answer the door won’t pick up the phone, nobody would but to a man they say you should. Fuck them you don’t want to hear it.
It’s the small things that matter, contemplating off and on for much of the day, I should wash the dishes, it’s been two days now, you will feel better if you do. It’s then it makes sense, you don’t want to feel better, not yet you need to earn it, put your time in and stay in your hole. Just thinking of washing the dishes is an improvement as you just proved there is light and there will be a tomorrow. So much of the pain depression brings is knowing you are at your most comfortable when you are alone in your darkness, safe from intruders who want to advise, to help, to cheer you up but all you can do is pretend, your fine knowing full well nobody believes you. Nobody asks “what’s it like” or “what do you think about when you are depressed” I find looking for those answers is the only therapy another can offer as you begin to see yourself and feel somewhat improved believing that maybe you gave yourself some understanding while describing it to one of the few you know will listen and understand as well as one can without feeling it themselves. For me it is to understand what needs to be done, knowing what you should do but not doing it. Spending more time on the tiny thought than the time or effort the action requires. It’s just not the right day to do the dishes. Too many things must align to create the mindset to do the job, not today and I will not speculate on tomorrow. Good intentions and plans are the enemy of your world while you occupy that hateful place you need so badly to be submersed in. The black hole calls for you and offers the only kind of comfort you can rely on. A certain clarity you can understand where the language spoken is only that of despondency. You need that place to suffer and learn and allow your mind the freedom to think what it must in its search for elements to repair or at least an understanding of which is where repair begins.
The time alone having retreated from the life around you is tolerable and needed. It’s the effect of your retreat and the things left undone and the people who feel abandoned that becomes the hardest part as now you are fixing what’s around you and that is the price you pay for taking the devils vacation and swirling around in the murky nothingness that calls for you and can not always be ignored. You know who you are better than most, you give yourself the honesty that’s needed as your ego doesn’t rule in the black hole as you allow the darkness that resides to communicate, to teach you. But many know not what is to be done as they fight to become who they were and not who they are. It is that conflict that for many keeps a lid on real improvement with your own growth. If you don’t embrace and face the darkness that surrounds you then you will never own it , it will own you.
Never in my past did I have any idea of what real depression was. To understand it is the complexity left behind in the vortex of an absence of emotion not an abundance of. It’s not sadness as I used to think , it is unto itself the product that is left behind when conscious emotion has withdrawn. However with many your ego lingers behind which is always the dominant force that drives us. Your ego is there to serve you and sometimes it just can’t help itself and gets in the way, it becomes the roadblock you must pass before any real precision of thought and self awareness will rise up to keep your focus on the beauty of your existence that waits to be recognized. Like all truly. beautiful things they must be seen as a whole in their entirety as the secret to beauty is it carries all the elements that make beauty what it is. If you stop and think of the most beautiful things in nature or perhaps even thoughts, they almost always include an element of ugly which serves as contrast therefore increasing our perception of beauty not diminishing it.
It is no longer beautiful if we modify , remove or edit something in an effort to improve. Take the thorns from a stem of a rose and you have ruined it. We all have our thorns and would do well to get to know them better so we recognize them when we see them and improve our ability to control them.
