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Saturday 15 August 2015

Depression

Depression.... What a loaded word.. what a downright sometimes dangerous word for who really gets the right to talk about depression? Who is allowed to discuss it... I don't know and maybe it's ok not to know but maybe I want to talk about it. Have I ever been depressed?..... probably not seeing as I feel the need to ask that but can anyone really define what level you are at to be depressed. Was it when I couldn't sleep for worry, couldn't eat for fear of losing someone to it.
I've lived with depression, eaten with it, laid down at night with it, woke up beside it, climbed out from under the duvet from it and tiptoed to the next room where I sat and listened to it breathe and twist and turn and cry... I learned very quickly that depression showed itself in numerous forms. Denial..anger..fear. ..pain... normal everyday emotions that no longer reveal themselves. Watching them feel nothing was the killer... going through the motions without giving you an emotion is hard to swallow. The times I longed for a situation where a scream or an argument would have been normal became a situation I lived with. Did I try to goad an emotion, yes on numerous occasions but one thing I learned quickly was that I was trying to pull an emotion from something that had shut down. Was it painful yes it was... did I feel the denial...anger...fear and pain I wanted from them. I felt it like a thousands flames burning my skin but I couldn't make them feel it. That's depression in my mind. People who are alive and breathing and feeling nothing..
Depression is not like anything you'll ever witness.. you can't pack them off to a hospital for an operation like tonsils or appendix.. you can't give them treatment for an infection... you can't do anything but scream or cry for the very thing they can't do... they can't scream or cry because they feel nothing..... that nothing sinks the one looking on into a bottomless pool of hopelessness because all we have is emotion and all they have is none

Valerie Masters

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