depression

Spontaneous feeling, fleeting impressions, a shared story, moments of unconscious closeness – everything demands the energy of motion, and all motion is too fast, too tiring. I get nervous, look at the negative, the annoyances, the things I need to slow down. All I can do is guard the perimeter, keep the inner domain safe, stay on the lookout for the sudden shift, the threat of a shaking earth or a high crashing surf. Colors confuse, pulling my eyes and mind in too many directions at once. Shadowy sight is less demanding, less shrill.

But night has its own demands of total dark, a stillness too still. Depression pushes me farther in distrust of living toward no living at all.

Even my vision slows down. Rapid movement is a blur. My mind can only process a still photo, not a movie. I want to catch one frame at a time, like old-fashioned film editing. You crank the film one frame at a time through a small viewer, stop, back up, cut several frames, splice the ends together. Edit out the confusion.

I want to piece the world together in visual patterns that stay put, like fitting words into sentences that don’t change until you rearrange and edit them.

Everyday living is the shove into that free fall. Anxiety, fear, exhausting action that’s too much to take in and react to. People need responses, feelings, words, smiles, laughter, sympathy, time. They...need all of you, and I’m in retreat to slow motion solitude.

'Thought pushes one word at a time into speech like boulders uphill. Then each sound rolls slowly across tongue and teeth. My jaw’s like lead.'

John Folk-Williams

Chronic pain develops or worsens. Chest pain, migraines, stomach problems, and a weakened immune system are some common symptoms.

There’s a bone-deep weariness that becomes a constant companion; no amount sleep or coffee can shake it off. When people say they can’t get out of bed because of depression, this is what they’re talking about.

That day at the beach, I told my coworkers about depression’s physicality. Every part of me ached from resisting gravity, as though my cells wanted to collapse in a puddle on the ground. My skin stung like lotion on a fresh sunburn and my throat hurt from the lump that lived in it. At one point, I was seriously underweight because I couldn’t force food down.

          Sarah

The most important thing to remember about depression is this: you do not get the time back. It is not tacked on at the end of your life to make up for the disaster years. Whatever time is eaten by a depression is gone forever. The minutes that are ticking by as you experience the illness are minutes you will not know again.

      Andrew Solomon