My dictionary defines Depression as:
severe despondency and dejection, typically felt over a period of time and accompanied by feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy.
I wish I could say I have no idea what this feels like, but unfortunately I’m all too familiar. In fact, I’ve dealt with depression intimately ever since my early 20’s. Hell, maybe even before. I was pretty emotional even as a kid. Then again, what kid wasn’t emotional?
There’s a medical definition as well, but it’s basically the same as the one I’ve just given, with some more specifics. I’m not going to argue with Merriam-Webster, but I’d like to propose an alternative definition to depression.
Depression, as I see it, is exactly what it is: a depressing, a closing in, a shutting off. It is so debilitating because it causes its host to do the opposite of what it was designed to do: to open up, to expand, to bloom. All energy is by its very nature expansive, and wanting to go out. Depression is the perverse opposite of this: a withdrawing in – but not in a way that serves the Being, but in a way that blocks it.
I wish I could say I knew the quick and easy cure. I could go on about emotions being like storm clouds, about how it’s all in one’s perception, but what good would that do? I’m not here to solve problems.
I like to think I’m not alone, however. In this big, scary, wonderful world, I like to think there’s others out there who knows what this contracting feeling is like – just as they know what the expanding feeling is like. I’d like to connect with those people – to get to know them by name, and to see what they’re all about. Not so we can commiserate with each other, NO! But so that we can begin to help each other. So that we can get out of the unnatural closing feeling, and get into the natural opening feeling.
Maybe we could go all the way to the other end of the spectrum. To a place where we’re open and blooming. That’s the way we’re supposed to be, it seems to me.
Manic Expressive.