The Nature of Depression

9/29/13

The Nature of Depression

I don't care if anybody reads this - it's just my mind relieving itself of the burden I carry around with me day after day.  Depression is an ugly word and for most people not something they can comprehend.  I have, over the course of many years, gathered all manner of advice, from well meaning friends.  

The problem is that few, if any, have suffered from depression.  Having the blues is an animal of a different sort.  Blows in, fusses around your head for a day or two and then blows out.  A long time ago I too had the occasional blues.  But for the past 20 years or so the blues manifested themselves into full blown depression - the sticking around kind.

And if you're asking about just putting on a happy face, I can assure you that a happy face is only good for so long, and then it crumbles. And when it crumbles what you are left with is a true pit of despair.  The kind of despair that sits at the end of a very long and dark tunnel where the sun doesn't shine.  

I am, at the moment, asking only of myself that I get through every day in one piece.  And right now that is asking a lot of me.  I would give almost anything if I could wake up one morning and somehow magically during the night the veil of depression had lifted leaving me in a better and kinder place.  Sadly, that hasn't happened, nor is likely that it will be that easy to rid myself of the beast that lives inside my brain.  Sometimes I feel like my brain is trying to kill me and nearly has twice this year, and yet I'm still here and I wonder why.