Everything turned out well in the end, but this is about suicide.

Today I came across one of those list articles on facebook. This one promised all the quotes that people with depression had found helpful. I clicked, dubiously. These things are usually full of feel-good bs that advises us to just think happy thoughts. As if we weren't already struggling to do that every single moment. As it happened, this article wasn't the worst offender I've seen. It wasn't particularly helpful or memorable, but at least it wasn't completely offensive. I would have forgotten it completely if I'd come across it before now.

For a long time, I thought there were no words that could help. Or if there were, I thought they might always elude me. Recently, I found words that affected me. Words that ripped my heart out, showed it the world outside depression, and stuffed it back into my aching chest.

It wasn't pleasant, but nothing pleasant had ever affected the feelings of hopelessness and aloneness that are the hallmarks of my depression. Maybe it had to be something that hurt, to put my chronic hurt into perspective.

Because of these words, I learned what it looks like to be on the outside of depression, looking in, and the insight I gained surprised me. I learned that I wasn't able to figure out the words that would help me fight depression because I was too far inside my own head. This was something I had to see from the outside. These were words that could have been pulled from my own writings; they were the voice of my depression, verbatim.

The words? They were a suicide note, written by someone else, using the script that reverberates every time I spiral down. Only the names were changed.

It was eery.
My heart broke.
Cracked open like a rotten pomegranate.
All the worms escaped the fruit,
and the sun lit every bleeding corner.
And I understood.

And it would have killed me if that person had not made it to safety.
The day they almost died, they taught me how to live. 

[Book review] Boy meets depression

My first impression of this book was not favorable. This, I thought, is not a person who has mastered themself, who can look back and be objective. This person still carries the hurt of their loneliness everywhere, and their writing is imbued with it. The humor sounds snide; the stories sound whiny. The author acknowledges this early on, though, so at least there's fair warning. The first paragraph ends with, "I came into the world kicking, screaming, and crying. And maybe not much has changed since." 

My first impression was arrogant, apathetic, and wrong. This book demonstrates the real pathology of depression, and for that, it's brilliant. You hear the negative thought processes that people with a depressive disorder experience, the anhedonia, the alienation, the feeling of being lost. "All you can see is the moment you're stuck in," he says, and he's right. 

So read this. It'll help you understand, and maybe have a little empathy for the millions of people who suffer from depressive disorders. But maybe be prepared to find the author's tone a little annoying.

Blogging for Books provided me a free review copy of this book... and I still feel kinda 'meh' about it.

whew

There's a lot on my mind.
I'm going to write about it... as soon as I get my homework done, which could be a while.

Until then, here's a bit of prose:

I wish I could
gild your scars
so you could see your beauty.

It was inspired by a friend of mine, and a Japanese pottery style. I'll tell that story soon.