A new 'B'log...

Hi there!  And welcome to my new blog.

I’m a writer, musician, and thinker; some of my musings have been recorded online before.  I have also suffered with Depression for a long time, most of my life, in fact. But recently I have started to find ways of dealing with it - or, at least, things that help.  I thought I would now like to create a blog in which I can maybe pass on some of the things I’ve found – and will find – helpful in the fight with Depression, and in life in general. There may be times when I document the struggles too, because life without integrity is nothing more than a stage-play – and I am not an actor, I am a human being, and we all wear too many masks anyway.

I thought I’d begin with something I feel is the most accurate depiction I have ever seen of Depression.  It came last year in the form of a Dr Who episode, which many of you may have seen.  

Here's a great little video someone has put together on YouTube, with clips set to a song used in 'Vincent and the Doctor' from series 5. It gives a good feel of the whole episode:

The episode is wonderful from beginning to end, delicately and brilliantly handling the subject of Depression, never trivialising it, but never over-emphasising it; keeping it in its rightful place: the place of a constant stalker, lurking in the shadows – unseen, like the monster Vincent and the Doctor fight in this episode – not always noticed, and not always impacting on life, but always there, always affecting the way a sufferer moves and behaves and lives.  It is like the smog in the air of a Beijing summer’s day – tangible and tasted, filling the lungs, weighing a person down, sapping energy and strength, yet still capable of appearing ‘normal’, at least from ground level.

I may be over-doing the analogy, but it’s the best I can do.  Depression is something hard to describe, and we always fall back on metaphor or simile.  Personally, I usually describe a period of depression as like being trapped in my own mind, stuck in an impenetrable box.  I can claw at the walls, fighting this way and that, desperate to find a way out, or for someone to find a way in, but there is none.  And if I try too hard, it can feel as though I am going completely insane.  It’s a very lonely place – the loneliest, perhaps, where it seems no other soul can understand or truly empathise with the suffering.  Regardless of how true that may be, there is no escaping the feeling that it is true.  And thus the walls of the box grow thicker and higher, and the light grows dimmer and darker and still more lonesome….

There. Now I’ve bummed you all out, I’ll move on to cheerier things in my next post...!  Thanks for reading, I hope I can be some help to some of you out there, if not for yourself, then for those you live with or encounter.  It is always better if we can understand what others are going through, I feel…

M