They used to think the earth was flat and long, dropping off at some point, past the horizon. If this was the truth, last week I may have tried to walk there, to the edge. I may have just continued to walk. That sounds terribly dramatic, but this is what it’s like to be a person with depression and anxiety. It ebbs and flows with no warning. I wake up some days and just know. Oh no…it’s here, so heavy…I want to start walking…but no, I can’t. That’s too hard. It’s like waking with an itchy sore throat, a full chest and head. A cold. No cure, so common. Arriving out of the blue and staying until it feels like going. This week it is gone. Just like that. Poof. I feel…good. I wish I could explain the sporadic nature of this coming and going, follow its course to the edge and back again, […]
The light is different when autumn comes. It is less heavy on the air, and more sideways. That might only make sense to me, but that’s okay. We are looking forward to the colors changing, and they will, all of the sudden, when we’re not looking. We do this too, you know, you and I…we change all of the sudden when we aren’t looking. If you stare, it won’t happen. Or it will, but you won’t be able to tell. Look away, go and do, the change will come. I have had the feeling of floating through, and not in a good letting-go kind of way. This is more of a stunned silence. Only a creaking on the stairs, or a heavy fog over the water, no light cutting in sideways. I want to come through to the other side now. It has been a long wait. When you are the depressive type, you can […]
Don’t worry, I won’t pretend to be an expert on depression or any mental illness or addiction for that matter. I could try to do that, telling you I have a degree in Psychology and ten years experience working professionally with people struggling with mental illness. I could tell you that I have struggled myself, with both depression and addiction and I am sober and I’m better. That I know how it feels. I could tell you how many people I’ve known who have taken their own lives. In a way, I guess I’m telling you all of that. But none of it matters, so let’s not focus on it. Nothing makes any person an expert on another person’s pain, mental health, life, or death. And yet there sure are a lot of self-proclaimed experts out there, especially on the Internet. And lately I’ve been so immersed in life that I am very […]
