Relative Something

Depression stalks like a predator and looms large on the brink of moving in for the kill, but it never does. That is what is so insidious and debilitating. It feels like a constant unseen threat. It is like the incredible effectiveness of a torture method that relies on perceived threat, while never crossing the line to following through. It is so intolerable that when individuals can no longer endure the constant feeling that depression is going to move in for that kill, they take care of it themselves. There should be no question why someone commits suicide in that light. Being stalked is worse abuse than experiencing the ultimate confrontation. The confrontation is actually freedom from the burden of stress of anticipated confrontation.

Just like it is too bad that broccoli doesn’t taste like chocolate, it is too bad that the ongoing anticipation that any second will reveal the news of winning the grand prize of our dreams doesn’t loom large on the fringe of our essence day after day after day after sunny damn day. They would need to devise a drug to give us to help us normalize from that constant state of OH MY GOD I’m about to win it all!

I am continually fascinated by the tenacity of depression to cling to the fringes of those of us who experience it. I am never surprised when a person who knows depression reports its incidence. We have periods of respite and feel right with our world. Others are able to enjoy our success. When I see a report of one who is under the oppression, it saddens me for their suffering, but never surprises me that it has occurred. We get to treat it, but we don’t always get to eradicate it.

I have potions and exercises to dispatch it, yet still, in the middle of an otherwise successful amount of healthy activity, I have seen it peek in, as if lifting a facade to reveal the dismal void – a striking contrast; a hilariously out of context glimpse of its threat – that almost make me laugh at the ridiculousness, but for the lethal threat it offers and then find myself back at the task at hand, engaged in the otherwise healthy world all around me. I am duly warned of what waits on my fringes if I ever choose to disregard the conscious decisions I make to walk a path alternate to that possibility.

Maybe I should look at being grateful for the glimpses and for awareness of what they really are. Mostly, I consider them unwelcome interruptions and jarring for their shock value. A lot of, “What is that doing here right now, in this otherwise pleasant moment?”

I think I will begin framing them differently in the future.