I asked my son to write about his depression. I am trying to save him.
I want to know what it is like to be inside him. Him specifically because every person’s suffering is different. I know the exercise of putting words down on paper heals.
But I know depression only too well. It chases me. It’s never far. Though it’s been a good long while. The monster has been resting.
It’s been glorious to wake without it heavy on my bones.
If I’m lucky enough to live a while in peace, I fill my mind with other things, books, music poetry, and people who tell a different story one of liberation from the destruction, heavy, crushing demolition.
When I slow down now to remember – for I told him I would write, too and put down the words of depression – it feels like letting a monster out of its cage to play a while. A dangerous game. The monster only wants to kill. But if I visit, like in the zoo, perhaps I can view it from a safe distance.
Depression is dogged, relentless. It won’t let me sleep well, and the more fitful the sleep, the longer the dark days awake. Depression hurts me in my bones. It’s a deep ache, heavy, as if I’m full of sand. Each step, each breath, each thought more difficult than the last.
Yesterday, I heard it knocking, I learned I’ll be seeing someone, a family member, who has declared me unfit, unworthy of their love (and time), and the monster came to sit on my chest. Instantly, I was immobilized by anxiety. Meanwhile, it laughed deeply and ironically and climbed on top of me.
As I drove through the Wisconsin countryside, fighting to stay awake from a long day, a great big, emorphous tonnage of a monster crept up and pounced. I feel it now, the next day. On my ribcage. I can’t see it, only I feel it make itself at home on my ribcage. I can’t fling it off, too heavy, but also like water between my fingers, shape-shifting, magical but hideous.
So I am in danger right now. I’m at risk if i keep it to myself. I’ve never achieved anything important by myself when it comes to this monster.
I can distract myself, but that’s a dangerous addiction for me. I can retell my worthiness to myself, but the monster on my chest is about my value, and I’m no match on my own.
But pride always keeps me from speaking. I’m mute against the danger, the suffering which I know will come in the days ahead if I don’t speak aloud. “I am in danger.”
As I chase something truer than her lies, I’m already tired.
I’m already afraid.
I’m already beaten.
I know one of these times the monster will win.
Do I fight?
For now, she settles in. Ignores me. That is her superpower satisfied with scaring me close to death then slowly crushing the air from my lungs. I know if I don’t fight, she’ll more than ravage. Or maim. More than lay waste.
She will consume and kill me slowly, as asphyxiation finishes the job.
Right here, in this moment, being tired already, I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll go sit in the sunshine. That’s a microchoice toward life.
Logic & Imagination 