Making Sense of Depression Through Writing
How I stay sane wave after wave
I cannot deny that I have gotten better mentally (and certainly physically). My emotions have been pretty stable, nothing way-off-the charts. I feel relatively more hopeful about life and what it has to offer me, I guess.
But right when I think my life is finally starting to take a turn, I find myself swirling back into some sort of depressive wave, and it is not just any “sort” of wave.
It is not “the blues” or the “I feel sad” wave. It is a bigger, more powerful wave, one that insidiously takes over and consumes me, one that keeps me underneath it not for a second or two, but for minutes that turn to hours that turn to days.
And just like that, I lose my breath.
I am stuck in that wave and have been for five years now. Sometimes the current calms down, allowing me to catch a breath, to float for a while.
While I am left to float, I find some relief and solace. I soak in every moment of fresh air while it lasts.
But then the tide grows bigger, and I, knowing in the back of my head it will not stay calm for longer anyway, anticipating its arrival, try to hold on to my strength. That strength I earned from learning to fight against — and often times cope with — the thousands of annihilating waves that have consumed me over the years.
That wave continues to grow so strong that it overcomes any and all the resistance I have built against it over the years. So strong that no human ability or willpower is capable of overcoming it. It is too vicious, too strenuous, too fucking forceful.
This is depression.
I am out here trying to use a wave analogy to describe my depression, hoping to do its harshness justice. Would figurative language help, I wonder?
For so long, I have struggled to find the right words to explain what it is like living with the inner demon that resides within me. Every time I attempt to write about it, I fail miserably. But today, as I feel this “tide” grow stronger and stronger inside my “stormy sea of emotions” (my mind), I thought this is my chance. I have to write. Now is not the time to escape. Now is the time to face my current state of being, letting (but not surrendering to) the uncomfortable emotions that usually put me in a state of turmoil, sit with me.
“Why?” said my emotion mind. “Run. Go crawl up in your bed for hours, or go numb your emotions with weed or crazy exercise or fasting.
Another voice in my head said “No, you have to come to terms with your distress. Feel it suffocating you. Feel it draining your energy. Feel it as it comes. Accept it. Tolerate it. Write about it. Besides, the only way you’ll ever be able to describe it well enough is when it is right with you, as you write.
And I wrote.
Maybe I will not fail — once again — at translating what I experience into words. Maybe I’ll find some peace and courage writing about what I fear from and resent the most: my depression.
