Conscious depression

These days, I am slowly, but it seems surely, slipping into a deep depression. It has been going on for some months and I do not know when or how it will end.

I was clinically depressed in early puberty and so the feeling is eerily familiar. This time round, I am trying a new approach. I am trying to let it be, to respect my body’s decision or need to shut down, physically and emotionally, to withdraw itself and me from those around me and wrap me in a dark cocoon. It is not easy to function like this – indeed in my teens it was impossible. One must accept that others will observe your darkness, the ebbing away of your lifeforce, or at least its retreat into hibernation. That others will in turn shun you, afraid of being captured within your event horizon. This is normal, and as it should be.

This experience, though unsought, is not, I believe, to be feared; not at least any more. I can observe it and write about it and I can believe in, in some mode, its resolution.

Depression is quite fascinating. It is fascinating to see this wall coming up, in the same instinctive way that a shellfish will close inside itself when touched. It is fascinating to see connections to the world dropped, one by one, like the arrival of winter or a foretaste of death. The shutting down of peripheral sensation, slowing of the central nervous system, the feeling of emptiness in chest and belly. To observe what passes and what remains. Where, for instance, is anger? It is there, but quiet; in no way ruffles the deep inner silence. And love? No, there is no love. Love is remembered, but coldly; it is not felt.

I can look at my limbs and it is as if they are not mine; as if no effort, however great, could ever move them from their inertia. The bottle of water across the desk could as easily be a thousand miles away.

Libido shuts down. No pleasures of any kind move me to enthusiasm. They may be, I do not hate them, but I am beside them, they are for others, not for me.

As I retreat within, on this path as infinite as the one outside, there is surely something to be learned of meditation and encounters to be made with myself, with my history and the many psychic scars I bear which never healed. In a way, it is a luxury and a choice. At least for now.

The first time round, I doubtless lost count of the number of people whose advice was to “snap out” of it. But I feel I want to go in, deeper, to understand it, accept it and yes, even be proud of it.

You see, as relative engagement with the world lessens, one may understand how relative it was to start with. The starting point was not a norm, it was a paralyzed coping, hidden and afraid to say its name. It was, itself, a degree of depression, just a degree to which I had become used, which I accepted, with which I even identified, and certainly within which, behind which, I took refuge.

To see this accommodation for the temporary and fragile equilibrium it was is, perhaps, to be freed to move beyond it. When the way forward is blocked, then one can make progress only by going into reverse. I want to know what it really feels like in this unknown country inside me. What lies behind all the mists, the horrors I experienced but perhaps also other forgotten things, precious things abandoned and left behind in the rush to escape and find safety. Cold things, treasures covered in slime or cobwebs, but still there. I have, writing this, little inkling of what they may be – their existence is as pure an intellectual construct as that of some subatomic particles. Be it so.

To recap, I know already a lot. About love, spirituality, childhood traumas and their aftermath and what it is to live as an adult, fully, joyfully. I know exactly how things should have been in my life. But I am not able to realize this journey any further at this point in time, I am quite blocked. I do not blame external circumstance, I just know that I must now dive back within. With my eyes open, an oxygen supply and a line to the surface. Consciously.

Friends, I may be a while, but I am safe this time. That place inside feels dark and numb only because it has not been allowed to be a part of me, has not dared to integrate the surface. But I know it is me, too. It is the feeling, flowing, primal me that has not been allowed to be.

Man muss noch Chaos in sich haben, um einen tanzenden Stern gebären zu können.