On Depression
Depression, I have written reams on the subject if only scribbling's of desperate thoughts, dark poems, scary dreams--attempts at documenting where my mind goes in such states of suffocating tendrils and strings of inner dialogue that tangle round confusingly the manuals passed out by supposed authorities.
Just before finding this prompt, I read a steemit article in regards to the language surrounding suicide and Anthony Bourdain’s recent death, written by @shayne. And then, a most interesting response rose from @valued-customer, who turned the entire conventional concept of depression as a mental illness on its head, when he wrote, “The push to make suicidal efforts a mental health problem, which it usually isn't, as folks are ravaged not by insanity to the point of despair, but rapine reality.” His words this morning, bells of truth to a realist who often wonders why others are so easily fooled into continued faith.
And, as a depressive, having been diagnosed as such, even labeled persistent, non-treatable, and with suicide a reality in my family with my grandfather and uncle now gone on that train, I say to others, they were Successful in ending their lives, a final winning move, freewill departure, advancement of one’s own accord--who doesn’t kill off a few pawns while playing chess?
That’s how I think it can be somewhere out beyond wallowing or desperate pleas to stop some loneliness. Yes, perhaps a lonely place, but a solved-the-problem clarity that arises as the best outcome solution. Like an objective perfectly aligned with a learning growth outcome. Just as they teach the teacher’s to “unpack,” the common-core standards, into precise learning targets—circle the verbs and so on.
The collage of photos are mine, and consists of a series of pics I took driving into work each day during a particularly depressing year. They're a juxtaposition of light and dark and the driving while looking at sky, water and clouds and documenting me, only for me, was the best, most freeing part of my long day (around 5 minutes). There is sense of being able to escape, my eyes wandering to holes in the sky, heavenly light, the great expanse of sea and sky carrying on in great power to their own rhythms.
Those photos are so beautiful and so emotive.
Even beyond the freewrite prompt I can see that depression and suicide is something that has been profoundly affecting people today. All over Steemit and Facebook, I see people sharing their stories and their thoughts about suicide. I hadn't ever thought about it the way that @valued-customer described, but that comment really hit me. It's so true. We want to think of depression as a mental illness, but it's something that exists deep within us--a perception of reality that is very real and not at all delusional. I hope you are well today. <3
Thank you, mallory, a photo compliment coming from you :)
Yes, his comment really worked to shift my perception--challenge how I might think about depression.
I apologize for the late response here. I felt that heaviness of so many talking about suicide and depression, not only on the net, but in my town.
Yes, I am doing well and thank you for asking and reading and suggesting the contest :) Happy Sunday!
I'm glad my own desperation has become of value to you in your own experience of battling malign influence on your own life.
Take heart that your life and work has value to others beyond you, as I did not when I went through my apotheosis. I became convinced my suffering had no meaning. Your post and enlightenment because of my experiences prove that I was wrong.
Know that you aren't mad, or weak, in your feelings. You are being harmed by folks that seek to prey on you, even though they don't know you from Eve. The siphons of our enemies are designed to extract our substance autonomously, without the need to be targeted by overlords, because their underlings each do that for them, right down to your boss, neighbors, and local politicians.
The solution I stumbled on was all that was left when the doors to my hopes and dreams were all found to be not only closed, but locked from the other side: stop working for them, stop supporting them with my substance, and directly work for and with my neighbors.
While I am not able to buy whatever trifles I think are shiny and coveted, my actual needs are met by my neighbors. I've prepared one meal in the last two weeks, because my neighbors feed me daily. 5 out of the last 6 months my rent has been paid by folks I do work for, in lieue of payment for my work.
Neighbors aren't the enemy, no matter what fears are driven into your mind by the enemedia. Meet them, see what they need, and meet those needs to create communities of folks that aren't parasitizing you.
Doing that lifted the veil of grief that I saw the world through, and has replaced it with honest joy at being a member of a community of good people, flawed and broken as are we all.
Above all, don't fall for the insidious whisper planted in your mind that you don't matter.
You have proved today that I do matter, because I have become helpful to you despite my never having even met, or heard of you, before.
Know that proof you are. It is true.
Believe what is true, and build on it with principles you know are right. Your neighbors are in the same boat, and when you take off the veil of grief, they can get glimpses of it through your eyes, that see clearly at last.
Makes me happy to have run into your comment and words, both here and on the original post. And, I can see how you have made a difference so you're correct in pointing out that I have no idea how I might be doing the same for unknown others in just being who I am.
I have stepped away from a position that was siphoning too much from me and as you know there are some who are eager to shame and question your/my decisions in order to put you/me back in the line. Although my neighbors aren't feeding me, I too am experiencing miracles &/or surprising ease in "making it," in a society others are so convinced requires large sums of money. Fortunately, I questioned banks/debt early on and worked to pay my house off by forty and that definitely helps in the freedom department.
Also, appreciate your views on lifting the veil of grief and seeing that neighbors aren't the enemy, interesting how the enemedia is working to isolate us.
I think that the "positive thinking," branch of advertisement/propaganda adds to this isolation by encouraging people to deem themselves unworthy or weak because if they'd only change their thinking all would be well.
You do matter. I matter. Thank you for truth in response.
Hey @kimberlylane , would you consider using #letstalk as a hashtag to discuss depression and other invisible illnesses?
I really was touched to see your story and I found it would help to get a permanent conversation going on steemit to promote community and reduce the risk of suicide just a little more. Stop by see my story and maybe we can be better friends! I love your writing thanks for sharing today!
Hi, dizzy. Thanks for reading and your invite to #letstalk. I did read through some of your posts and then didn't get back around to responding to comments due to a busy weekend.
Surprising how sharing can lift others.
“The weight of the world is love.
Under the burden of solitude,
under the burden of dissatisfaction
the weight,the weight we carry is love. ”
― Allen Ginsberg
And its this weight I feel, as I sit at the edge of the abyss.
I do think and feel word usage is important when talking about such complex things. I find great usage of non dualistic approach of eastern philosophy. And there is a concept of Don't Cling, There was this famous Tibetan Monk, that told the acid heads of the early 60s, when you see hell rising up your legs Don't Cling, when you see the bliss of heaven above don't cling.
And you know there is something to this, deep nature, going back to rapine reality can't be squared with the western mind set. deep nature seem to me non dualistic pain/love bliss/fear death/life space/time they seem to be at their core the same. Chaos gives birth to a dancing star, or my phrase The Luminous Dark, when the abyss shimmers, giving life to everything.
lastly another concept I find useful is Detachment, in the eastern sense as I understand it. Its doesn't mean you don't feel anything, but rather you feel everything so deeply that it dissolves back into the abyss and you ready for the next felt experience, you don't cling....
Yes, don't cling. Upon first reading the sentence from @valued-customer, “The push to make suicidal efforts a mental health problem, which it usually isn't, as folks are ravaged not by insanity to the point of despair, but rapine reality.” I imagined being rushed down a river, free-flowing and detached as you say, but how his words were like a peg, or old piling which grabbed my shirt and forced me round, before again I am rushed down the river. Like I'd been looking so long down the river that I had forgotten what was behind me--in actual sight (using my own eyes) and not just memory.
Interesting to consider whether or not memories are planted in the sense that how we compartmentalize is so attached to key words and language (as you've mentioned). In this sense I agree with detachment, but I think too often people label the ACTION of turning (or any action) NOT detachment and in that way personal/community development can be pushed aside.
The acid, and suggestion that one shouldn't cling, but we're human and tend to and some of my greatest learning has involved delving into the darkness, being strung on a cross before resurrection, your luminous dark to shimmering abyss.
Such beautiful words positioned together! In reading them together: luminous paired with dark and then shimmering paired with abyss, there seems an abundance of light rather than equality in negative and positive connotations. In your pairings, abyss becomes a positive place :)
This is off topic but there's a contest going on in which @derangedvisions is giving away delegations of SP for deserving writers who could use some extra help growing. I recommended you for it because I think you're one of the best authors under 50 rep that I can think of on here. You'll need to enter it yourself to get the delegation: https://steemit.com/steemit/@derangedvisions/i-am-giving-away-360sp-in-delegation-to-3-awesome-steemians
Thanks, Mallory :) I'll check it out!
I want to provoke a different view.
How about trusting your intentions when you are with others (working, shopping, celebrating, grieving, etc.)? The rules you're subject to are a reality. How about checking them to see how far you can take advantage of a personal space and still sail under the sail of the playmakers without them taking you up the witch's pole?
Some sage once said: if you can change something, do it. If you see that you can't, admit it.
I once worked under an ESF project aimed at integrating migrant mothers into the labour market. I could have barfed because I felt like a government henchman to suggest to women that they can only consider themselves valuable citizens of this country if they serve the economic cycle in the way they are meant to. My boss immediately saw through me and said that my attitude was more or less useless and that I had a bit of a tendency to be anti-government. Nevertheless, she hired me for the project a second time and after a short time I dropped it myself. In the first project I enjoyed a relative freedom in my counselling and I came to the conclusion with some women that they had other priorities than gainful employment and therefore left the project. I stretched my latitude to the feasible limit.
Authorities who believe of themselves that their diagnosis is set in stone can usually believe that if their patients are unlikely to ... surprise them. If I am indignant or injured at being attested madness, then it is to be assumed that I classify this assessment as true and give free rein to those who are supposedly without doubt. ... However, I would like to think that everyone is also a little right. .... When I felt trapped in the deepest phase of my depression, I was indeed displacing myself. My worldview had narrowed to the smallest point and focused deeply on my suffering. I attribute this to the fact that the shock that I was actually physically overwhelmed took me there. I call it the leap of reality! With a bang I was thrown into the brutal truth of life!
Nevertheless, I was not mentally ill in the sense that I would have lost my sensory abilities. I tasted, smelled, felt and saw the world. I assessed it as I chose to observe it. ... The end of a depression determines a person: that's me.
Though it's easier to rise from it if others don't believe in my depression.
I can believe in it or let it be that there is a family disposition. I can break the chain or confirm it. The more I am absorbed by the fact that I was predisposed and the more it becomes mine - and thus also the truth of those to whom I bring this truth vehemently.
... If suicide were an expression of clarity, wouldn't we have a Catch22?
Someone who separates from this world in equanimity does not need to pull himself out of life by force, does he? ... We survivors can construct this as an act of freedom, but is this not more of an intellectual explanation?
An interesting question to me is this: what had supported me in becoming determined to say goodbye to my depression? ... I haven't found out an answer and probably never will.
Maybe ... there is a chance that as long joyful people are around a depressed person this person can still witness happiness and asks the self in wonder: if there is at least one person who can laugh, is there the possibility of me gaining my laughter back?
Erika,
I can identify with your operating under the radar and creating a space in which to sail under the playmakers and perhaps that is sort of what I am thinking or writing about--that in a sense, being "diagnosed," can create an explanation NOT for me, but for those interested in enforcing social conformity. I am happier, more free to research, but also as I write this I can begin to question myself-- I really ought to be strong enough to just say, "no, that is not who I am and I am choosing to do differently." I suppose it's like being surrounded by a pack of hungry wolves who at first want to eat the whole of me and if I instead throw them a pork chop, they scramble off to eat that instead ;) I guess I've decided I can't change the system head-on as your sage recommends, recognize when that's the case and proceed accordingly.
When I write about suicide as clarity, I am not suggesting carrying through equates to clarity, but instead trying to convey the feelings I have experienced when I've walked towards that plank. A clarity of thought in how all will unfold, a precise planning and action, something much different than I think most movies depict. Similar to childbirth on TV and the reality that's brushed over in those quick clips.
And, I have survived, not carried through, so somewhere, parts of me do not believe in suicide as the optimal way out.
I too have encountered that sacred space/experience/being in which I was relieved of the extreme agonies of depression in anxiety in the pacing of suicidal thoughts.
I am smiling right now :)
With my example I have tried to explain that my boss, although she seems to be government compliant - after all, she is responsible for the budgets and that money goes to the social institution, is no better or worse than the rest of us. If you look at the hierarchy from the bottom up, my result is not that there are any conspiratorial intentions up there to subjugate a population. These people have their daily lives and their work and I have noticed that everyone is grateful for a little kindness and equanimity. The rather awkward and bureaucratic concern of the funders to ensure that more women are employed has only resulted in money being spent and people being employed in the project to pay their rent and food - which is needed, too. As far as I know, the whole thing was rather a flop and the other project participants have already screwed up. No one has been enslaved ... or was eaten ;-)
If I want to make a difference, it's bad for me to feed an enemy. My boss could very quickly be regarded as a woman integrated in rank and file and it would be easy to imply that she was just a puppet of intentions from above. I realized that this is nonsense when I got in close touch with her and was open to what makes her personal. She's a tough and friendly woman. There are rules to play.
She appreciates it when other people stand up for their ethical principles, even if it means resisting her. At first I had some arguments with her, because I refused to do everything she asked of me and I had been aware of my value. But how easy it is to assume that she is a wolf, I experience again and again that people sacrifice themselves very quickly because they do not find the courage in themselves to say when they dislike something. Then the mental placeholders come into play: the government, the banks, the rich or the civil servants.
I have colleagues who do not dare to rebel against a supposed authority. They swallow their anger at an injustice and poison themselves. It's always someone else's fault. But I also have colleagues who do. I can't see much of a one-way controller. People are smart. They contradict either openly or quietly. My experience of life has taught me that almost nobody lets himself be forced into something he doesn't want.
The assumption and mental construction that we are generally manipulated by higher powers seems to be a kind of tick. Even if it were, a review of one's own real scope is all the more important to see clearly.
There is exactly as much evil in my adult life as I let in and give it meaning.
I had a conversation the other day with an old friend who poisons himself with the media and somehow masochistically draws on what is evil and violent in the world - which is just the opposite from the esoteric happy new speech. When I told him that each of us has a meaning and that I know that my existence and actions in the world have a good influence (besides the bad), he vehemently contradicted me. He even accused me of living in a bubble of illusion and how I can only imagine that I mean anything at all. I asked him what he intended to do against all the critizised and whether he would take personal consequences. I told him that I work with refugees and that every single conversation was important. I am one representative among many who come to my country and make a difference. He said he had to admit that he probably had to form a party to change something, but he had done nothing. I think he considers himself worthless and he is probably the greatest capitalist when it comes to a man's need for success and money to represent something in society. But he has little idea of community, because he is not really interested in it. Nobody of his friends ever said that he is worthless because he makes little money and works a poor job other than himself. People start to believe him though ...
I'm not mad at him. He will probably die convinced that the world is a cruel place. There's nothing you can do but love him without agreeing with him.
Sorry, I got carried away because I am still provoked by the many encounters here where I sense that one-sided conspiracy theme. It colored this comment. As you already might have noticed I mostly referred to your wolve-expression.
Yes, I can see the feeding the wolves comment got to you.
I'd like to clarify a bit in saying that I don't just throw a "chop," let others pigeon-hole me in the general sense--meaning, for the most part I am able to speak my truth and happy to share a contradictory opinion, but when it comes to massive corporations/institutions/governing bodies that are set-up as people, but are in fact an entity, I believe it is different. Where it is difficult to locate a head, because all are there upholding a code of automated law (nice and hard-working people like your boss), that those are the times I find my energy may be wasted and that my functioning and giving to full capacity maybe hindered unless I know when my fight might be worth the effort.
Do I like all laws being enforced at the school? No, but I am in no way going to start yelling at the principal or even the district superintendent because I know that their hands are tied too and they only want the best for staff/students/education. They get their mandates from the state and they from the federal government who currently has 'elected,' a Woman for head of U.S. education and she has never been a teacher, or any experience educating in a classroom and her children did not attend public schools.
Should someone oppose the head, which in any case isn't even this individual woman because there are numbers of boards and voices in a democracy that winds up with hands tied with court cases and red tape anytime one attempts a change. I do think it is necessary for someone to fight for justice, but in that BIG sense, I am not the one. I have four children, am middle-aged and my effort in growing a better world is more enlarged outside the walls of an institution because my talents are not apart of their curriculum.
I think I could spend a lifetime going to battle with the institutions or I can spend my time helping and being helped by those people who I encounter in a flesh-body and living within my community.
Like I wrote in the previous comment, I thought that the sage you were referencing suggested knowing which battles to fight and which might be a waste of energy.
As this post was originally about depression/suicide, I'd like to say that those extremes rose when I was attempting to fight another's battle and fit into the correct criteria for the corporate model and this was not the one I had energy to fight because it was a war with my own nature.
Believe me, I have lot's of courage and endurance when I am standing behind something I do believe in, but I think society (and especially under current U.S. rule) is indoctrinating and employing "believer's," to force an agenda onto other's.
A difficult balance, for sure. On the one hand, there is evil in the world and a division in peoples (here in the U.S. pitted violently against one another and these not seeing they're behaving nearly the same in their vehemency to the other side who are simply people too). And, on the other, the positive and still seeing that there is beauty, light and goodness and a reason to be joyful in living. But, I think we must be careful about the incessant positivity, especially when we're (meaning societal) turning around and saying you have the power to change this kind of thinking because that message might be going into the ear of a person who is working hard, owns his house, is doing everything he knows how to be a good and productive contributor to his community, but is essentially isolated in getting this all done (work/car/wife/jogging/whatever) and he feels he is not himself, living his best life and isn't even sure how to articulate that any longer as the societal conditioning is so embedded that he now believes the messages to be his own voice. So, if he throws a "chop," tells wife and authorities he's suffering and needs to scale back on work hours, in our country that is considered by many to be weak and being weak is failing and this is a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps country. In the past few years at school the buzz word has been grit. Teach the kids about real grit. It doesn't matter if they're the smartest one the one who now wins in our educational system is the one who won't let go of the idea of the American dream (which is very independent/isolating) in nature.
:) Now, I'm going on and on!
Nice to have these discussions with you, Erika.