The Awful Cyclical Nature of Depression
I’m profoundly blessed in that I LOVE to write. And to CAPITALIZE random words! I don’t just love to write: it’s something that I need to do. I need to write to stay regulated. I need to write to stay sane. I need to write in order to feel like I belong anywhere and have something to contribute to the world beyond sadness and desperation.
I read sometimes about writers for whom the physical act of writing is torture and feel grateful that writing comes as easily to me as breathing. Or at least that’s how it usually is.
I’m usually able to write my way out of Depression. Writing about what I’m going through can be cathartic and help me understand myself better. But I don’t even need to be writing about myself or my lifelong battle with mental illness in order to find life-affirming escape in putting words together and then sharing them with the world. I just need to be doing what I was put on earth to do.
The tricky thing about Depression is that it robs you of the pleasure and joy you get from doing the things that you love. There are few things in the world that I love more than writing.
I love the actual process of writing but I also appreciate the emotional engagement of writing for the Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place audience. I lead an often lonely life. Most days I don’t see or speak to anyone outside of my family but through the magic of the internet I’m able to have conversations with delightful people all over the world. Even more astonishingly, those conversations are almost invariably intelligent, respectful and devoid of the kind of juvenile pettiness the internet was built on.
I’ve had a hard time writing blog posts these last couple of months because Depression has been hitting me hard. I’ve got that awful sticky grey hopeless Depression that drains you of your energy, optimism and enthusiasm and instills within you a deeply anti-social, counter-productive desire to go back to bed until you wake up in some magical alternate universe where your problems are solved and things don’t seem quite so dire.
There’s a cyclical element to a truly brutal Depression. You feel like a hopeless loser so you retreat from the world as a protective measure. That makes you feel more isolated and alienated from the rest of humanity and keeps you from being productive.
You’re failing, which only makes you feel like more of a failure, which makes it harder to get out of that rut and break out of your Depression.
I’m struggling right now. I really am. I know it seems like I am always struggling. That’s not untrue but some times are better than others and right now I am going through some things!
So it means the world to me to have this soapbox to hop onto four days a week so I can try to say something meaningful or funny or insightful about the world and have you beautiful people respond with kindness and thought. You give me the strength to keep on going when things otherwise feel hopeless.
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