Grief or Depression? Finding My Way
How the 3 Wise Men’s “epiphany” pointed me in the right direction.
This article deals with the impact of loss from suicide. It is not at all graphic, but if even the subject is disturbing, know that you may reach out to the National Suicide Prevention line (800–273–8255).
This holiday season has been one of great sorrow for me. I am lost in it. And I am afraid. I can recite the “reasons” for it — suicide of a friend, grief, and depression.
I’m a psychologist. I’m good at it. But sorrow doesn’t care about “making sense.” It doesn’t want your mind. It wants your self, and your soul. The more I try to understand it, explain it, or focus on my negative thinking, sorrow finds every crevice, every safe and dry place in me and it fills me to flooding.
Some mornings I stumble into it, carrying a heaviness that slows everything I do. It makes me stupid and indecisive. Then there are the all-out assaults, where the pain strikes inside me in a place that has no name. It is the seat of emotion, of intensity, of the way my emotions can go from 0–100 in fractions of moments. Crying is too polite for it. The noise is guttural, my face and shirt are soaked with a fluid far stronger than tears.
