happy chatter

It could be a touch of post-holiday blues, sliding down off the high of sun and surf and sleeping late into wind and cold and schedules. It was just the break we needed, but it was over too soon and isn't that enough to make any normal person feel somewhat miserable?

Personally I don't think it is post-holiday blues. More a touch of mild depression. For some time I have felt detached from events going on around me, a puppet on strings woodenly observing everyone else living life. My internal mood gauge is flashing its own warning sign - the clouds are devoid of beauty. When I am happy and engaged and enthusiastic about life, clouds never fail to capture my attention. Be they dark and threatening, scudding in fast motion past azure blue, billowing upwards in sun tipped splendour or making faces, I notice and drink in their beauty. Not now though. Now they seem all grey. The sky is grey, the flowers are grey, life stands out in monochrome.

I've been here before, in this greyness. Same story, different stressors: too much emotion leaking from numerous small wounds, too little restocking with love and light and life. God is love. Jesus is the light of the world. The Holy Spirit breathes life. I missed them. Forgot them in the midst of the wounding and now I am depleted, reduced, a shadow.

The trouble with depression is that it draws me so fully into its misery. The sky is not grey, nor are the flowers, and life beckons me in full colour, yet depression dulls my senses, shutters my eyes and the truth dances past unnoticed.

I was depressed once before and it was worse. My good friend contracted me to call her if I thought I might kill myself. I never really contemplated ending my own life, there was no plan. I only wished someone else would end it all for me, that I might not wake up and have to face another day. No, it's not that bad this time and I'm imbibing St John's Wort, Berocca and endorphins in an effort to prevent any further progression in that direction.

Something else I remember from previous blue days was the turning point. I know depression is more than the result of negative thinking, but when you're miserable the mind tends to misery. Negative thoughts crowd in unbeckoned. There is a temptation to wallow: woe is me, for I am undone. I remember deciding then enough was enough. I had sat in the pit for long enough and it was time to look up. In the end I came out of that depression in a matter of days, although I had been down there for a few months.

With previous experience in mind, I'm trying to cultivate positive thinking. The world is not playing out its life in black and white, so every day I look for a flash of colour and cling to it. Today it was the sense of community at the homespun market I stumbled across, chatting casually with people I knew, barely knew or had never met before in my life. Yesterday it was the moon shining it's pure white light onto a world already tipped with pink from the setting sun. Like extra lighting in a photograph that cancels out lines and wrinkles, the moon cast a soft, perfecting glow over our very ordinary street. On holidays I was fascinated by the sand balls produced by tiny crabs.


Natural artistry that delighted me no end.

I call them my treasures, those daily flashes of brightness in the midst of the grey. God's gifts breathing love and light and life back into the dark recesses of my mind. Each day I find one and hold it in my hand, gazing upon it, letting healing and hope flow. Day by day colour creeps past the shutters of my mind.

I am restored one treasure at a time.

Labels: depression, emotion, self analysis