Yes, that's right. I'm bringing up all of the scary monsters in our closets and under our beds these days. Don't worry. I'll soon be speaking of brighter things.
The truth is that many of us have known depression. Many of us know it still. And there's no use pretending that it's not there - a seemingly formidable opponent, something that blocks joy, smothers love, fuels fear.
I want you to know that I have direct, personal experience with depression. I have been depressed myself. Over many years I would feel the depression washing through my body, my consciousness. I would despair, and fear it, for I knew what it could do. I knew its power. My family has a history of depression. My younger brother, Christopher, died trying to rid himself of a terrible despair from which he was not able to escape while he lived. Other members of my family continue to struggle with the hopelessness of it even now. Brave Christopher tried talk therapy, drug therapy and even electro-shock therapy. He felt trapped by it, engulfed in it and smothered to the point that he could not go on. Many of us have felt something very similar to that. Many of us have contemplated ending our lives to escape the chilling, numbing despair.
I do not take depression lightly. I do not demonize it either. I think that we label almost any sadness, now, as depression. The world is filled with darkness, even as its light shines; we are allowed to feel sad about how things are in the world, in our lives, in ourselves. One of the reasons why I write about pain, grief, depression and other dark and terrible things is because I do not believe that we can truly avoid them. They are the darkness that outlines the light. They are as much a part of our world as are our happiness, our gladness, our hope and our joy. And if we pretend that they are not there, we deny a part of ourselves. We cannot do that and hope to come to our truth, our full centered being in the world. We have to bring all that we are with us into the frequency of joy. There's no other way than to bring ourselves whole into this new light.
I'm going to tell you what I have done with depression. You can decide for yourself what you will do, if you feel it within you sometimes.
I never took medication for my depression. I was afraid of the medications, of their side effects. I wanted to deal with my depression myself. I stumbled along for years with it. I came to understand just how much exercise could help me to manage it. Depression is chemical. I could feel it in my body. Exercise helped to mitigate the heaviness of the depression. Just going outside for a walk around the block helped. The more exercise I could manage to bring myself to, the better I would feel in my body, even as I felt the depression there still.
Ultimately, I was afraid of the depression. Terribly afraid. Especially after Christopher's death, I was afraid. I would feel it coming, note the tell-tale signs. It was like watching the approach of some terrible and implacable enemy.
I decided to face my fear. That is the first thing that we need to do with depression. We need to decide whether or not we are going to be filled with fear of it. The fear is a very real potential for us.
Depression terrified me. I chose to face it. And in order to face the depression, I had to choose not to be afraid of it. I knew what it could do. It could do to me what it had done to my brother. It could take my life.
But I decided that I couldn't live a life of fear. I just couldn't. So I faced it. And I'll tell you something: the instant that you decide to face a fear, it gets smaller and less powerful. It's pretty wonderful the way that works. One minute it's this huge and horrible thing, and the next minute it's manageable. It's still there, but it's the same size that you are - it's just something you're feeling - a part of your experience of being in the world.
Once I had faced the fear of the depression, I was able to actually sit with the depression itself and face it. I already knew it very well. I knew how it felt, how long it lasted for me, and how exercise helped a bit. But I had never really sat with it before. I had never just been with it without being in some kind of resistance to it. It was scary, but it wasn't worse than anything else I'd ever faced, including Christopher's death. I decided that I wasn't going to try to get away from it; I was just going to let it be there and I was going to listen to it. I was going to hear whatever it was that the depression had to say to me. What's the worst that it could say? "You are a big fat loser and your life is a joke and has no meaning and you would be better off dead..." Well, if it said that to me, I would have a choice of being miserable about it, or saying, "Okay," or deciding to change my life. Anyway, that isn't what it said.
It said, "I am here. I am this. I am with you. I am what you are right now." That's all it said. That big, bad, scary depression just said that to me. I waited for it to say something else, something worse. It didn't. It just said, "I am strong in you right now." And I felt it. I didn't run away from it, to the television or food or friends, or drugs or alcohol. I just sat there and breathed in and out, and felt it and said, "Okay. That is what I am feeling right now. That is what is in me." And it wasn't so bad. I could breathe. I could choose things. I could choose to go outside, to move, to feel. And when I faced it, spent time with it, not afraid, not trying to get away, I learned to accept it and to accept my own life, my own truth about myself. I cried with the strength of it in me. I'm not going to tell you that it wasn't strong. But it just needed that acceptance from me and all of its implacability, all of its fierce, sharp strength, seemed to just flow out of it and into the world. And I was free. There is no way out, but through. I went through it and came out much stronger and more aware because of it. And I truly believe that if I can do that, so can you. I don't know if Christopher could have done that. I think perhaps he could have. I know that medically speaking, his depression was very severe.
Depression deafens us to the joy that lives within us, that waits, like autumn's seeds wait for spring. Depression seems to defeat us because it fills us with the feeling of defeat. I believe that we just need to sit with that feeling, not to fear it, not to run from it. It won't end us. It won't swallow us whole. It will give us the experience of defeat, of despair, of hopelessness. That's a colour that we can then know and understand. It's a dark colour, but no darker than some others. When we fight it and fear it, we give it strength beyond its own. When we face it and come, over time, to an acceptance of the feelings that it engenders in us, we lessen its impact, soften its lines and bit and bit we allow ourselves to hear once again that sweet song of joy that has been hidden from us.
Once I had faced the depression that filled me and faced it squarely, it never returned. It has been years now since I have felt it. That does not mean that I haven't felt sad. I have felt sad many times. But there is a difference. I know the colour of depression. I know what it means to be depressed. So many of us know. But when we are able to be with it in acceptance and to stand in our truth, on the solid ground of our being what we are, what we truly are in the world, then it cannot do us any harm. And as we breathe in and out with it, not trying to get away from it, just being, it fades and eases and slowly moves away. And then we are free of it, but only because we've faced it fully. Then we are free, free to love, to laugh and feel joy.
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