I was texting this morning with a friend who's in therapy. (Don't worry, there are so many of you your identity is safe!). It reminded me of my time in therapy during the late 1980's through the early 1990's. I wouldn't be here today without the work I did then and while no one would nickname me Sunny, I am a happier person because of it.
There are many names for depression and if I weren't in such a hurry to get ready to go to NYC for the weekend I'd look up what William Styron or Andrew Solomon had to say about the matter. I think one thing depressives have in common is that they name their enemy. Mine was called The Sludge, I explained to my friend this morning. I envisioned it as a black, viscous, slow-moving organism that took up every molecule of optimism and will to live I owned. (Remember the movie, "The Blob"? It looked like that, I kid you not.) In the process of leaving me, The Sludge would tear through my soul (thanks to the catalytic nature of psychotherapy) and I would be sick, inert with suffering and doom for days. But it was leaving, that was the difference I intuitively realized. It was leaving. The feeling was different than my standard issue depression where I could feel it settle into some region of my body and leave barely enough energy for me to eat, sleep, job and take care of a kid. I managed to endure this metamorphosis and since that time I've rarely been depressed in the way I once was. Unhappy? Yes. Miserable? Indeed. But a depression that wasn't precipitated by a specific event (a break up, a literary rejection) but only by having the audacity of being alive? Never again did I suffer one of those.
Every day without The Sludge has been a blessing magnified. Now if I could do something about my visceral fat ...
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