BLACK. Depression & Suicide.

This month will mark a year since I was 'cured' of depression.*

Someone asked me this, reffering to a suicide,
"so what's the story?"
"they were depressed."
"well, obviously..."
This common attitude towards depression & suicide annoys me a little. Then I stop being annoyed and am grateful instead that the person doesn't know what it is like to be depressed.

Depression is a reason and a world within itself. It is illiogical, even by standards of emotion. It is a loud, indistinguishable pyschological pain. It can probably only be described by adjectives and poetry (though it is the most unpoetic experience) because it defies all other reasonable language.

Depression is a falling and falling into black. And even 'black' is too sharp, too defined. It's more the idea of black, a general shadowy haze that blankets all areas of life, if you can imagine such, because it alters your filter of reality. Absolutely everything is twisted. When I was depressed, I was disgusted at the ugliness that is the human spirit at it's lowest. There is no elegance, no grace, no silver lining to depression. Life is just a very unfunny, boring joke with death as the punchline. Punch.

Cause
 People ask about the cause of depression. There are no causes, only triggers. I differentiate because when you are depressed, your thoughts do not centre around the triggering event, as normal, 'healthy' sadness would. It centres around you and your unhappiness. And a 'solving' of the trigger will not 'solve' the depression as in sadness.

Some Symptoms
If you are depressed, you will find it very difficult to believe that anybody loves or cares about you. The idea that you are lovable is too foreign. You excuse loving actions with, 'they're just nice people'. And to tell someone you are depressed would be to shame and disappoint that person, burden and embarrass them, and it would only be you feeling sorry for yourself. It is also an utterly embarrassing to be a dysfunctional human being. You want to burst into tears 'for no reason' at the most inconvenient of times, such as the middle of the lecture. I can remember a classmate, after greeting me, commenting on how tired I looked. How could I tell her that I actually got 10 hours of sleep the previous night yet still felt so fatigued (an atypical symptom I later learnt is called hypersomnia).

One has no horizons, no hope for the future. One is blind to every prospect. The future is dismal, a pointless extension of the current meaninglessness of your existence. The only thing to clutch onto in your despair is the hope of death.

Suicide is final, complete, a certaintity of relief, something you can control. It is so different to the uncontrollable whirpool that is being alive, where every breath is pain. Suicide is an escape from your mind, the only escape.**

The End of the Beginning
Thank you for reading this post. I really hope to write more about this scary but real truth, depression. I will maybe share what my journey of healing was, and share where I think the disorder fits into Christianity. I think learning about these mental disorders is important.

Please leave a comment if you have any specific questions about depression.

*Please note that the following is an account of subjective experience, I'm sure anyone with depression would describe their experiences differently.

** Please note that I do not think suicide is an acceptable way of dealing with any life experience, I am only expressing a view that I held in my depressed mind. There is a better way to get better -and stay better!!!

Bonfire with Friends

So Amy & I picked 5 of 20 of these 'little projects' to put into one poem. (See if you can spot them all!)

4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.

I think these whole feeling of mish-mash gave me the idea for the general message of the poem. Last night at Satellite we had an epic bonfire, but every week with these people is amazing.

Bonfire with Friends

We join our hearts under the stars -
           except, not so poetically, understand?
It's more like,
           The fire is the centrepiece
           And the storm of our eyes.

But we're all talking,
about nothing and everything,
Haha, so kiff bru.

It's a brilliant dance of being -
           But we're just chilling, hey,
Futhi siyakudumisa.

And our voices look like a symphony of city lights. 

 

Dream a Little Dream

This is a piece using a task prompt from The Inklings' creative writing workshop.

My interpretation is to write like you're experiencing a dream and all its vivid strangeness and incongruity.

I was standing in my wendy house when a gust of air blew in some dandelion seeds. The floated in through the window, and, when they were close enough, I saw that they were tiny hot air balloons, made with brightly patterned designs. These hot air balloons were carrying tiny girls, one drifted close enough to shout into my ear in a squeaky voice, 'Would you like some tea?'
'Oh, yes I have a tea set just here.' I turned around to get it and then I was standing on a beach of turquoise sand. Dark purple water lapped at the shore, and the sky was a painful orange. Next to me was my teacup except I had no sugar.
Fortunately! there was an island of sugar cane in the water, not too far away. I climbed into my tea cup and the current carried me toward the island. Fish circled my cup, some near the surface, so that I saw they were black catfish with feathered tails. They nudged my cup boat. I put my fingertips to the water's surface for them to brush against me and one of them began licking my fingers with a green tongue.
I suddenly realised I was outside without my hat on, and it was midday, and I don't take sugar in my tea anyway. So I woke up.

Phillipians: This Paul Guy

At my church we're going through a series on the new testament book, Phillipians. I thought I might share some of my personal journey through it with the blogosphere.

This book, as Eugene Peterson says, is Paul's happiest letter. The first thing that catches me in Paul's words is his faith that bubbles over into joy.

I absolutely love this guy. He was a learned, well-educated Jew (when it was the in thing) and an upper-class citizen of Rome (when it was the in thing) who threw all of that away and is now writing from a prison cell. He just can't keep these narrated letters in order, despite all that learning in logic, he gets swept away - in all his letters - with the gospel. This mind-blowing message. All his points seem jumbled up but they are far from difficult to read. They are dripping with the juice that is the Holy Spirit, any discussions on his revelations will, I'm sure, only scrape the surface of their profound meaning for the deepest parts of our lives: our relationship with God, our relationship with ourselves and our relationships with the people around us.

This is Paul imprisoned. I wonder if he was confused - up to this point he'd been travelling the world, changing lives everywhere by sharing the good news with any and everyone. And yet now he is in chains? He kept His faith in God's will, believing being in prison was want God wanted of him. He kept his joy. Little did he know that his confinement led to the blessing of generations and generations of Christians to be. Because he kept his joy and desire to share and wrote this letter without moping around.

If it weren't for that prison, we wouldn't have these chapters.

If we keep faith, how many prisons in our lives will God use beyond our wildest hopes!