Sky

Well it's been three days and the sky still seems to be holding up. The Globe and Mail suggests that some major world events are converging on catastrophe, but still the sky stays up for now. I float heavily through the days, not looking up much, but when I do the sky is still there.

In front of me is a grey, gauzy veil. Things look mostly like the darker, broken parts of themselves. If you have ever faced depression, you know this experience. One can no longer see what is, particularly as it relates to personal perspective.

I am sane. I can work. I can help others. But, I am loathe to help myself. It will shift eventually, but to endeavour to describe what it is now seems a meaningful human effort.

In front of me, but largely beyond my reach, is so much love. Love outward, love inward. My daughters' delicious silliness and seriousness both. My partner's abiding. My father's abiding—the longest history of all. I know. I see. I have gratitude. Just my armour is thick, limits my permeability.

I walk on. I do not settle into the dangerous non-space of self-pity (though I do have my moments). But while depression can be a comforting cocoon, it is also a steely stuckness. The thing is to keep looking up from time to time, to note the sunshine, even if I can't feel it.

Don't Fall On Me

Walk down the cool side of the hot street early this morning, make my way to work. Listen to REM's unthinkably beautiful old song, "Fall On Me." Hum along quietly, aware I am trying to contain the impulse to "lift your arms up to the sky, ask the sky...don't fall on me." If I let myself, I might drop to my knees on the hard pavement, look up and beg the sky....

I have been a fan of REM since their emergence in the early 1980's. My then-boyfriend, later husband, and father of my children introduced me to them before they busted into pop music. My older daughter too is a great fan of their early music. My younger daughter, ever on her own tangent to eternal sunshine, can't stand the band. She is wiser than me—if a song makes her sad, she turns it off.

Me, I'm drawn these days back to a sadness more bitter than ordinary sadness. An ordinary depression, perhaps. Yes, this is the haunting I experienced—starting its way in, ever so insidiously—nine years ago. A haunting that pulled me away from my work and into intensive treatment for a year. A haunting I thought I had conquered, until lately again....

I watch and wait. I turn inward and outward for support. Harder to access inwardly, the wires aren't connecting so well now, especially to self-compassion, the crucial antidote. I turn to blogging again because I want to call out to all those who suffer this curse: Let us gather our collective courage, and endure toward the blessing of the other side of sunset.

If only the sky won't fall on me.