*** Warning, this post may be challenging to read, especially if you don’t like to hear me complaining.
Jane has been asking me for days “Why are you crying ?”
There have been various attempts over the years to explain how depression feels.
Winston Churchill’s Black Dog is probably the most famous, and needs no further explanation from me here.
I’m going to try an articulate how I feel, using what I will call “Arthur’s Blip.” A deliberately innocuous sounding name that masks the enormity of the statement hidden within.
Why Arthur’s Blip….I’ll get to that shortly, because Arthur explains it better than I can.
Arthur’s Blip is what I am experiencing now. A massive nihilistic episode where I am engulfed by a sensation of worthlessness. A belief that the planet would, on the whole, be a vastly better place without my dreary perpetual, misery, and generally useless form, dragging down the remarkable people that I am surrounded by. The ever present thought is that a swift deconstruction of my being to a cellular level would be best for all concerned.
This makes me cry……
Arthur described it thus:
“We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.”
This is where it gets challenging for me. Because although I am a huge fan of Arthur’s work most of the time, I am going to fiercely disagree with this remarkably pessimistic statement.
Family, Friends, Music, Art, Busselton Sunsets, Spring motorcycle rides, the list of beautiful things adding meaning to our life is endless.
But when in the throes of Arthur’s Blip, there is only one outcome I can see, and it makes me cry. The endless beauty disappears, the attraction of the “Blissful repose of nothingness” grows.
This is what makes me cry. Why ? Because I am scared that one day I will finally loose the will to fight, and I really don’t want to.
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