A story

There once was a boy who loved to dig holes, for in these holes he found the secrets of the world. He would dig and dig everyday until he found the bottom of something and the would promptly move on to the next hole.
One day, a storm blew in while he was digging and he grew concerned. As the rain began to fall he feared that the drops would fill up his work and wash it away. Or worse still that he would not escape and would drown.

He was so close to the bottom though that he dug faster towards what lay beneath.If he could make it before the storm grew too bad he would at least have the secret that he had worked so hard to find. But the storm grew worse and his prize elusive. As with all secrets of the world it was buried deep from the reach of people.

When the storm was at its peak he found that the hole, contrary to what he thought would happen, had protected him from the rain and thunder. He was elated to find that this hole had revealed to him two secrets about the world, despite how far he had to dig.

So the boy continued to hunt for the secrets of the world and when a storm would come he would simply dig a deep hole and would hunt until the rain had passed.

Eventually, as boys are want to do, he became a man. Still he hunted the secrets of the world deep under the earth, and still when storms came he found shelter among those secrets.

One day, when he was still a young man, a storm unlike any other came. It was terrible and violent and so the man dug deep into the earth to escape its fury. He dug and dug, but still the storms pounding followed him. Finally he found the bottom, but instead of a secret he could return to the surface, it was instead a glistening cave.

The cave sang and glistened with secrets and lore of the world and did much to drown out the fury of the clouds above. He spent a great while here, exploring and listening and soon he lost track of the time. The storm raged and raged, but he was able to shut it out and saw nothing but the cave.

It came to pass that the man found himself lost in this cave of wonders, but did not care to fix it. He was as happy as he could be underground, and the secrets he found brought him joy and knowledge. Soon after though he began to grow hungry, and to wonder what had happened to his home. As he walked down the corridors nothing seemed familiar. No post or sign pointed him back to the entrance of the cave.

He became frantic and ran through the tunnels looking for a way out.

The storm still raged above and mocked his efforts to be free.

He despaired at the thought of being locked in this darkness forever.

There was a rushing sound ahead of him and he ran headlong to meet it. There he found a waterfall, beautiful and glittering even in the dark. It ran from a hole in the ceiling and fell into a great pond below him. The water of the pond was clear and at the bottom the man saw his shovel that he had lost so long ago.

He dove into the pond and swam to the waterfall, choking on the salty ruinous water. He fought the force of the falling water and scaled the cavern wall towards the hole that had led him here. His skin burned from the water scouring him and his eyes were near blinded by it, but he put one hand in front of the next.

The thought occurred to him that he could let go and just fall back into the pond. The cave below still had many secrets for him to find, but he continued anyway.

He felt the wind first as his head came up out of the hole. It was cold and terrible against his skin and made him wish again for the warmth of the cave.

The man opened his eyes and saw naught but devastation wrought by the storm in his absence. Gone were the lush trees and soft grasses. Even his home was all but washed away.

Despair threatened to consume him as he walked to his battered door. He swung it open on its rusty hinges and was welcomed by a warm fire in his hearth, his desk still sat as he had left it.

He sat at his desk and picked up his pen and began to write.

On Fighting

Any time someone is having a hard time, people always tell you to keep on fighting. This is especially common in dealing with adversity with regards to depression. People try and tell you to buck up, soldier on, and keep on keeping on (whatever the hell that means). 

What they fail to recognize is that people with depression HAVE been soldiering on. They have been fighting themselves every second of every. single. damn. minute. Depending on the severity, every word the hammer out on a keyboard, email they respond to, or time they open their eyes in the morning is a small victory that merits nothing short of a parade. But they don't ask for that because they know it is their own personal demons that they fight, and that they hardly need to fight an outside world that has a hard time sympathizing with a stubbed toe, let alone mental anguish. 

It is a quiet war happening in your office, school, favorite restaurant, church, and anaerobic basket weaving society. Someone there is dealing with it. 

What should you do when dealing with someone else who is depressed? That depends on the person and their level of suffering. And yes, I mean SUFFERING. Agony. All those fun words we like to throw around every time we are a little gassy after a burrito, but actually have real meanings. 

Some guide lines: 

1. Remember that they ARE NOT SAD! 

   People who are depressed are tired, weary, in pain. Sadness is a symptom, not a cause. It is the difference between the weather and the climate. Local weather trends are symptomatic of over all climate patterns, but are not a freak storm does not a climate make. Which brings me to point number...

2. Sometimes, people who are depressed, can seem happy and normal most of the time. 

  That is why some people are surprised when they find out someone is depressed. Never tell them they  were so happy yesterday, today, earlier, all the time.' They know how happy they have been. Depression is an intimate and vulnerable state. Many people who suffer from it have very happy looking defense mechanisms. It is to keep people from saying a lot of the things on this list and brings us to..

3. When they ask for space, give it. 

  Like I said, depression is an intimate and vulnerable state to find yourself in. If someone is depressed and they ask you for space/time/distance/silence, give it. It can take a few minutes to clear out the fog that depression puts in your head and severely skews your emotional responses. This means that when you push people, they can feel trapped, cornered and respond very.. poorly. This can range from open hostility and rage, to an enforced silence that could be permanent (towards you) if you are not careful. 

IMPORTANT: If someone with depression asks you for space, DO NOT MAKE IT ABOUT YOU BY TAKING IT PERSONALLY. Of all the terrible things you can do, this can make things spiral out of control the fastest. 

I will have more on how to deal with depressed people later, but these three things can be damned hard on their own. Try them out and see what you think.

What does a scanner see?

Continuing my thoughts on strong feelings, today I would like to address pain. Specifically how it alters the way you look at the world. Pain is, it seems, the one thing that your brain can't get used to. This colors the world around you in that, if you have an injury like me, everything you see is a rating of how much pain it will cause you. Each step becomes an exercise in damage control instead of the thoughtless exercise most people enjoy. It is hard to make that clear to people, and can make for some very frustrating conversations. You get tired of explaining yourself, especially to people who are close to you and have dealt with you on a regular basis.

It also darkens your world view quite a bit. As an introvert who suffers from social fatigue, I have spent most  of my life in self-reflection. I have also spent my entire life battling the fugue of depression that is always lurking in the periphery of my mind. Thus my world view was darkened from the outset, but the pain compounded it more than I thought possible. In depression, you can stave it off occasionally. Through fun, distraction, success, or relaxation the depression could be kept at bay for sometimes months at a time. The same cannot be said of the pain. It never goes away entirely. Medicines give temporary easing, ice can reduce swelling, and exercise can help strengthen the muscles. But it is still there. The best thing I can hope for when I go to bed is that the next morning might hurt slightly less.

I think you can see where this is all going.

When I, or someone like me, looks out at the world it is not a pretty picture. Some would call the situation 'hopeless'. But that would disregard my next point, which is that pain can put things into perspective. It fundamentally changes the world you live in. You begin to forget small things, to be able to communicate certain needs and wants, and it can utterly consume your life if you are not paying attention.

The world becomes murky, and you begin to despair. Everything dims, and hope becomes a poisoned trap that feeds into the dark fog that gathers at the edges of your perception. As the shadows close in, the mind gets lost when it tries to look inside yourself, and no one can even tell what is happening to you. This is compounded by the opiates which disassociate you from reality and can distance you from situations that need your utmost attention and feeds the apathy that accompanies depression.

So when you are talking to someone who suffers from pain or depression, remember this: There is a darkness inside the person you care about that is deep and terrible. It cannot be forgotten about lest you find yourself blindsided by the tumultuous hell brewing just below the surface of the person you are trying to talk to. It can hurt both sides and the last thing the person feeling the pain or depression is to inflict those feelings on the people they love.

The other reason not to forgot what these feelings are doing to your loved ones is that it can be hard to see through the gloom that sits over their minds. I cannot emphasize enough how hard it can be to see through those clouds. How easy it can be to lose yourself in the haze is as hard to make other people understand as the pain and depression themselves. So I will close with a quote that helps put it in perspective

"What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me, into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly, because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again. I'll only wind up dead this way, knowing very little, and getting that little fragment wrong too." -Bob Arctor A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick.