Depression is a smokey glass cube in the middle of a beautiful garden. Lovely friends gather around table-spreads of food. The affected one looks out from inside the cube, inches away from beauty, conversation and delicacies. They see muted visions of laughter. They try to reach out a hand, only to meet with cold, hard, opaque glass. There are small holes, usually adequate for breathing.
Like an inverted two-way mirror, most people never notice the wall. They just wonder why the person can’t move freely about like everyone else. Eventually, some caring souls do begin to see the glass. They try talking it away or slipping a key through one of the breathing holes, because it worked for them once when they were sad. They try pushing food through the holes, but it loses something as it strings through. Eventually, the burden of talking through the barrier wears on the relationship, and they slowly gravitate toward other, easier friends.
Depression is a smokey glass cube, where one can see everything but enjoy nothing.
For my friends who suffer, I pray you find relief from the biochemical cube you find yourself in. I pray you find hope, answers, empathy and a friend willing to prop up and sleep against your cube until it exists no more. One of the hardest things to find the courage to believe is that you can ever be normal again. I can’t perfectly empathize with your uniquely painful, hollow experience, but I can tell you that I was in a cube that I hardly remember any more.
Being alone in an open field can be a lonely endeavor, but being in a crowded space without hope is tragically worse. Depression often has a cause that you can point to, that people can wrap their understanding around. When I lost my parents and brother, people expected my sorrow. When I faced hardship, people expected me to be hopeless. When I was betrayed or rejected, people understood that heart-in-stomach acid feeling. Ironically, It is the times I wasn’t supposed to be depressed that kept me deep in the shadows.
Depression continues to be elusively misunderstood. There are so many emotions that can be called depression. There are labels, counselors, treatments, interventions and pills to treat the wide variety. Still, when we try to explain to someone how we feel, it becomes a watered-down and useless endeavor. Finally, we end up in the same place we started. We realize that to truly understand the pain and muted confusion we experience, one would have to get inside our hearts and minds and feel what we feel.
I try to help the bereaved, lost and injured as best I can. I learned being quiet is a cardinal rule. I have known so many who were offered the latest fad fix for despair. But, for those of you experiencing hard times and struggling, this post is not necessarily for you. At this moment in time, my heart is going out to the person who has no clue why they are under the thick, wet, humid blanket of despair. The person who doesn’t have a good reason to be in the dark. I have been there, somewhere in the swamp. I can’t perfectly empathize with you, but I hope you can at least see the ripples in the water and know I have been near.
For many who are depressed, some for years without end, you feel as though your life has become a movie. You get the disconnected sense that you aren’t truly participating, but merely feel like an observer. You no longer feel like joy, happiness, laughter or hope even exists in your psychological tool-set.
You may have short glimpses where you feel alive again, only to sink back down into what I can best describe as walking death. You don’t feel discouraged so much as you feel like your heart has hunger pangs, and your stomach and mind is empty. Your thoughts become disjointed and you feel like your soul has bled out anything that gave you life.
And you think there is no end. You will never again be “normal” or “happy” without the fear it is just a passing and evil tease of hope. The array of fixes has been tossed at you like you were a dartboard. You become a project, and often you just stop telling people, because nobody can help. The stupid pills, books, theories and yes, even prayers, seem to evade you. And then, there is the callous doubt that begins in those around you. Is it real? Is it really THAT bad? Then, the loneliness of a crowd brings the deafening blow.
When your heart feels hungry, your mind diseased and worthlessly clouded and dark, hollow, humid, devilish darkness smothers your EVERY hope and thought… you need a way out.
Please understand, the above describe the abyss I lived in for many years. In my case, and in so many cases I have seen since, the cause was purely organic, chemical and very physical. When I was able to one day crawl out of the swamp and breathe again, I promised I would help other people in the same place.
The calling came when I met Sarah, a girl who had lived for 2 years in the despairing muck. She began to dress in black and take on an outer appearance of what she was feeling inside. Then, when I had asked for classmates to write down prayer requests, I came to hers. She had written out “I’m so depressed I don’t want to live any more.” I was beyond compelled to help her find an answer. She had been given the rounds of usual answers and help, and nothing worked. She told me “They are looking for something to blame it on in my past, but I love my family and I have a good home”. I longed to help her, through my own journey and subsequent study and experience, to uncover the cause of her depression. When it seemed clear to me that her depression was rooted in a physical, organic cause, I got her to a doctor who had helped me come back from the edge of oblivion.
Within a month, I got a letter from her saying she was 98% better and happy for the first time in two years. My years of study led me to develop a questionnaire that helped many summarize their symptoms to help their physician find some of the many hidden root causes of organic depression. Now, before you jump to the end and expect one of the following, please understand, I have no “product” to suggest will cure every ill, no “plan” to follow with monthly payments, and no hourly fees for consulting. I am NOT a doctor, nor do I pretend to be able to “cure” anyone. I urged every person I worked with to take the summary of the questionnaire to their physician. I was thanked a few times by doctors for helping identify symptoms their patients wouldn’t have otherwise reported.
I know it seems hopeless… but I am in your corner and believe two things: there is a cause for your depression and there is hope for your life to be normal again