The Weight (and Wonder) of Depression
Do you remember when you were a kid and you’d be sitting in a chair and one of your friends or older siblings would come over and sit on you with their whole body? You couldn’t move, the weight of the other person crushing you, your body pinned, unable to squirm, or even inhale. The panic of running out of breath would set in as you would desperately squeak out the words, “get off!”
Yeah, that’s what my depression feels like.
It can come of out of nowhere and sit on you, and while in theory you should just be able to just push it off, it’s much heavier and difficult to move than you might think. You’re trying to say something, anything to get it to move, but you’re breathless. There is no way to help yourself and there is no way to ask for it. And beneath such a huge looming mass, even if surrounded by people, you feel alone, invisible, meaningless, small.
The day after my 38th birthday, I experienced a huge crushing weight of depression. I wasn’t totally sure what brought it on, but it was one of those times when my heart literally ached in my chest, to the point I wanted to put a Band-Aid on it just to help it stop hurting. It felt like a lifetime of pain and sadness just sat right down on top of me.
if i put a bandage
on my chest
will it hold together
the pieces of
my broken heart?
I felt guilty that I was crumbling, like I had to hold it all together. I knew I all the tools and tricks for dealing with negative emotions, there was no reason for me to suffer through this. But I was paralyzed beneath the weight, and everything my brain might know about what to do couldn’t force my heart to do it.
And I felt afraid, embarrassed to admit how horrible I was feeling at that moment. Because saying to even your dearest friend in the world, I’m hurting, can’t happen when the wind is crushed out of you. When you have no air in your lungs, crying out for help is impossible.
The only thing to do is ride it out. Know that it will pass, as everything does.
So after a couple of days I knew I needed to get out of my house and heal my spirit. I went just a short distance west to forest bathe among the Redwoods. When I stepped out of the car, the silence in that grove, the stillness of the canopy quieted everything raging inside me. The feel of the soft earth below me as I wandered among the ferns and ancient wooden beings strengthened me from the ground up.
And I began to wonder why we’re so afraid to speak our struggles. Somehow we seem weak, either of mind or spirit, and fragile, or scary, or just sad. A lot of times we are. But it takes a hell of a lot of strength to endure its weight; the patience required to let it ride out, to get back up, even though your legs have gone numb and you’re still catching your breath.
Another few short miles up the road and I was breathing in salty sea air, cleansing my lungs with new breath to speak again.