They say that water is the most powerful force on Earth. A steady drip, combined with time, can change the landscape; a raging river does the same, only less time is involved. Water cleans, it sculpts, it sustains and, in the end, it’s the first thing to go when we die. While water may very well be the most powerful physical force on the planet, that thing we call depression is a more powerful motivator than anything else.<\/p>\n
I can already hear the argument: “what about love?” “what about desire?” “hunger?” “thirst?” “fatigue?” These all pale in comparison. See, depression isn’t a singular thing; it’s an amalgam. What we in the modern world call depression is really a combination of fear, doubt, self-loathing, shame, insecurity, hopelessness, and rage. Or, at least, those are the elements which make up my particular dark cloud.<\/p>\n
There’s been a lot of writing, much of it by writers far better than I, about what it’s like to be chronically depressed. I haven’t read any of it. I don’t need to. I have to wonder, though, if any of it talks about what I’ve been thinking about so much the past few days: what it’s like to hide, or to attempt to hide, how you feel from everyone around you, what it’s like to be functionally dead.
\n
\nBeing functionally dead is similar to being functionally illiterate or functionally retarded: you function, you get by in society but you aren’t really alive; you’re outside of everything, even your own life. The hiding part comes in simply by virtue of the fact that you do function. You go to work, you’re polite to your co-workers, you contribute in meetings, you do your job, often quite well. You go to the movies, grocery shop, take out the trash, watch TV, and even eat dinner with friends interacting with them all the while as if you aren’t rotten inside, hollowed out, as if the oatmeal you ate for breakfast didn’t taste like sawdust, the bread on your lunch time sandwich like cardboard. You act as if you are normal simply because you know there is nothing they can do to make you feel better.<\/p>\n
You don’t talk to your friends or loved ones about how you feel for a lot of reasons: too proud to admit you’re two thoughts in a row away from crying most of the time, too ashamed, if you have talked to them about it before, to admit that yes, you do, indeed, still feel this way despite how much they love you, despite your decent job and good health, despite your nice living accommodations and plentiful food and entertainment options. Despite all these things, you are still not happy.<\/p>\n
The hidden agenda is to keep others from seeing you as you perceive yourself, from seeing how you believe you really are. The goal is to blend in, to not attract attention, to not be the freak burned at the stake because you just can’t be happy to be alive, you can’t seem to go with the flow, you can’t stop thinking about how you don’t measure up, you can’t just be happy with what you have because, as your rational mind tells you, there are those out there who are much worse off than you.<\/p>\n
So, you go through the motions and wonder on the bad days how much longer you’ll have to do this. In some ways, the good days are even harder; they’re fragile, they don’t last, and you know that every minute that goes by you’re one minute closer to the bad days that always come around on the wheel.<\/p>\n
On the bad days, you just want to stop hurting, to stop being so sad all the time. Happiness isn’t even on your radar. Sometimes, pain free is high enough.<\/p>\n
Today is one of the bad days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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