Stubbornly Gripping Sunbeams
Let’s talk about depression. I mentioned in an earlier post this is something I struggle with. Depression isn’t a simply as being sad. The opposite of depression isn’t happiness. Depression can be too all consuming and permanent to be the opposite of something that can be as fleeting and temporary as happiness. Depression’s opposite is vitality. That ability to embrace life to the fullest and live each moment to the extent of what it deserves. Andrew Solomon, a renowned speaker and sufferer of depression, has a favourite quote “depression is a slower way of death.”
All of this is such a cheery uplifting conversation topic, huh? The thing is depression is commonly accompanied by shame. Shame that one is not strong enough, shame that one cannot simply be happy and content with what others might see as a great life, shame that those ridiculous tiny little things that ‘normal people’ do all the time seem insurmountable and impossible. It is this shame that can stop people from reaching out, from acknowledging their experiences, that keeps people denying there is an issue until it becomes so large as to no longer be manageable and to need dramatic (and mostly expensive) intervention. The impulse to hide from and not discuss depression only makes it stronger.
How does it manifest itself for me? To others it is seen as laziness (I have been called such many times, both before and after diagnosis by those who didn’t understand). The exaggeration of tasks into behemoth obstacles, getting dressed in the morning, remembering to eat breakfast, simple tasks that most people do without thinking, become gauntlets of mental barrage. Instead of going and making a meal of two-minute noodles, the task becomes:
1. Get up even though your entire body feels heavy and lifeless.
2. Go to the kitchen
3. Boil the jug
4. Survive the time while the jug boils as this is non-distracted time and the negative thoughts can shout uninhibited.
5. Pour the jug and endure the time the noodles are in the microwave.
6. Get out of the microwave and sit down somewhere to eat.
7. Have the desire to eat or have the energy to force yourself to chew anyway.
All of this while battling the feeling that it’s a pointless task anyway because when you are depressed you don’t care that your stomach is rumbling (in fact you sometimes welcome the experience of feeling) and you will struggle to find joy in the meal even if it was the most wonderful thing you have ever tasted.
This sort of mental chore-isation of tasks happens all the time. When depressed, a missed phone call from a friend doesn’t strike the chord of “wow they thought of me”, it makes me feel like there is yet one more task I need to add to my ever growing list of things to do. Sadly, with this one, I tend to want to put it off until I feel more vibrant and healthier, so I don’t burden my friends with my sad-sack self. This can mean it is months before friends hear from me even when a phone call from a loved one is a healthy thing for me to do.
With other illnesses, feeling better does not equal being better. If swinging upside down on the monkey bars takes your mind off having pneumonia, you may feel better, but it won’t help fix the pneumonia. The beautiful thing is depression is a sickness of the emotions. Which means whatever makes you feel better is helping fix it. Yes, there are the regularly known remedies of therapy and medication, but rock-climbing, scuba diving, getting a pedicure, making Gothic collectable teaspoon handles, any manor of things can be considered equal and relevant to the process of healing.
I commonly struggle when I forget the difference between anaesthetising the pain and legitimate healing. I have a bad habit is sinking myself into TV. This works for many reasons, the stories, the entertainment, the ability to experience and borrow other characters emotions so I don’t have to fully feel my own. There is nothing wrong with watching TV, but there when I am using it to hide from uncomfortable emotions/situations long term (it’s like procrastination but amplified and somewhat darker). Like physical pain relief, it is only ever meant to be used short term. But, also like pain relief, it can be addictive. Getting oneself off the anaesthesia of TV means facing all those uncomfortable realities and then some as new ones tend to crop up while you are under.
Truly healing remedies take more effort than anaesthetising ones. Exercise, eating right, sleeping well, socialising, creativity. These are the activities that make people feel alive, that help people embrace vitality, the opposite of depression. It can feel like a cruel joke sometimes that it takes vitality to live a vital life. But when those small glimpses of vitality break through the dark clouds of depression, like sunbeams through a storm, I have learned to embrace those moments. It’s almost as if I hold on tight enough, if I can grip onto the light like ropes, then I can pull the sun through the clouds; force it to push through the black shadows and get my blue skies back. My creative tasks have felt like chores some days, big, heavy chores but they are also like my ropes. If I can do just one, even on a bad day, I know I have a sunbeam, proving to me that the dark clouds aren’t all there is, that sunshine is at the other end and will come back.
As I write that last paragraph, I can’t get the legend of Maui and the Sun out of my head. There is a Maori legend from New Zealand which describes how we got our days. It is said the sun used to rush across the sky so fast that people didn’t have enough time to achieve their tasks for the day. Maui, a demigod known throughout the Pacific region (and credited for bring New Zealand out of the ocean), gathered a bunch of men and headed east to the find where the sun rose. They lashed ropes across the opening of the pit and waited till the sun came out from his resting place and beat it with Maui’s magic jawbone till the slowed down.
In my experience I don’t think I will ever be free of my depression. It’s like an old sports injury, if I am not careful to remember that it’s there, I can cause it to flare up again. Then on those occasional days where it’s raining funny, it’ll hurt for no real reason. I am getting to know my injury, what flares it up, when it’s an extra bit tender before a big twinge, or when it’s sensitive on just a rainy day. I don’t know every iteration it will come along as but what I do know is this: if I feel shame about it, if I try hide the fact that I experience life this way, I end up putting myself at greater risk of injury.
Like Maui, I wage war with the sun. Sometimes it breaks free of its ropes and zooms too fast across the sky leaving me in darkness. Sometimes I can grasp one of the ropes still trailing from its body and drag it back to where it should be. And sometimes, I win the battle and am rewarded with sunshine days that last and last.
Now, where’s my magic jawbone?
THE RUNDOWN
Art – An exercise in seeing what I can draw without taking my pen off the paper, that alone was challenge enough (11/100)
Writing – Novel: 1139 Blog: 12015
Cooking – Have managed to menu plan until July. . . what a nightmare! Also cooked Blackened Tofu, Rich Cashew butter with Tarragon Sauce, and Oven roasted Sweet Potato with soy sauce glaze (17/285)
Music – (7/100)
Photography – Missed the photo challenge last week due to being interstate, will try make up for it this week as well as starting classes Wednesday!
Craft – Origami jumping frog (actually jumps when you press it’s back down!) and a new pair of earrings (12/100)