Depression

Below is a copy of a blog I wrote about a year ago in the blog in Yahoo 360°. For one reason or another it came to mind yesterday and I went in there and found it (thanks to tagging). I remembered I got quite a few comments on this post then. Now when I went there to read I noticed several of them had removed their accounts…the comments were still present with a gray icon and the word [deleted]. The sad part is that I don’t remember who they were. They were all good and written with both insight and emotion.

I think I was reminded of this post because the light is slowly coming back and Spring is on its way. We still have great amounts of snow but the light is different and the melt has started. Personally I believe that after a long and dark Winter, this light affects me more than I’m sometimes aware of. Can’t say that I’m prone to depression…I know I’m not depressed now at least…I think it’s a pure chemical reaction to the light! Be it melatonin, serotonin or nor-adrenaline…maybe all the receptors are out of whack?! At least something happens…

Spring is a time of re-birth…renewal…at least in nature…and I guess I just don’t feel all that up to it. Everything gets so beautiful (even though it’s really going to take a while here) and sometimes you just want to crawl back underneath the covers. The windows need cleaning, the carpets need washing and most of the time I get overwhelmed and end up doing nothing.

I’m basically a happy and healthy person. Why shouldn’t I…?! I’ve got everything I could ever wish for and more. There is just this short period of time almost every year that I don’t feel all that chirpy. Maybe it’s just THAT! Normally I have a very positive oulook on most things in life so when I experience the slightest little bit of….what shall I call it…? Feeling gloomy? …it gets in such a contrast to the ordinary ME.

Honestly I don’t know why I’m writing all this because I certainly don’t use my blog as some kind of personal catharsis and I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I have everything to be grateful for and I really am so I hope you’re not getting me wrong here. Perhaps it just needed to be written…something that wanted to come out! I’ll fire up Photoshop and make myself an egg — then I feel good *LOL*.

A blog title like that would perhaps draw a few readers. Lots have been said and written about this serious condition. There are oodles of pharmaceutical products to treat it and them I know nothing about. One line from a T.V. commercial comes to mind … «Where does depression hurt?» and the answer to that is supposedly «everywhere». I don’t think depression is black or white …I think it’s gray. A heavy, gray blanket. When you just want to sleep but you can’t… When you see all the dust rolling around in your home but you just cannot bring yourself to pick up the vacuum and do something about it. You just sit there and look around at all the misery… That’s just my personal outlook on the subject and I think there might be many people out there suffering from clinical depression without really knowing about it! «What makes me write a blog like this?» you might ask yourself…it isn’t very like me, huh?! Well…first of all, last night I came across a blog — it wasn’t anyone in my friends list, it was outside — it was well written — such a clear and succinct description without adding any emotional stuff into it. …how it had started and how he slowly had come to the insight via a friend of his. All this made me think of what it’s like back home. There you very often …many times a day, hear people saying «Ohhh…I’m SOOO depressed». The word is so misused because what they’re really suffering from is most likely an adequate reaction to something that has happened to them. I mean, if someone close to you dies or if your spouse leaves you…you MOURN. That’s only natural and that doesn’t mean you’re depressed. In the long run you might turn out depressed but that is a whole different story. Secondly …a question that has been bugging me for some time now: What is the situation in countries where people really have to fight for survival in one way or another …where life is nothing but a constant quest for food for example?! Do they need shrinks? Are they depressed? Well… I sure don’t have any answers. I don’t have any answers at all but I do know that life isn’t always that rosy.