Rainy days and Tuesdays always get me down

I lost a favorite uncle last week unexpectedly.  He died on the way to the hospital.  He was a very sweet man and I loved him dearly.  I adore my aunt, who is now left to pick up the pieces of her life and move forward.  I do not envy her this task - I am so sad for her loss and I know there is not a damn thing I can do about it.  Time has to do it's magic.  Sadness has to be dealt with - and she will deal with it on her own terms.  Grief follows stages, it's a part of life.  Depression is another part of the process.

Depression is not something that I am unfamiliar with – in fact I once knew her quite well, intimately even.  I have lived long enough to have been through a few serious depressive episodes in my life, so I am able to recognize her seductive touch and identify her provocative scent.  She paints in brushstrokes of pale shades of gray with a whiter shade of pale around her edges.  She smells like the woods after a rain, so sweet and tempting and easy to slip into and become lost.  She reaches out with cool, feathery fingers and touches my face.  She is sadness and she draws me into her comfortable embrace, and I cry.

As a teen and young adult, I wallowed in depression and clung to sadness.  I imagined myself a poet and was always able to create beautiful words from sadness in both poetry and stories.  I would write pretentious essays on the state of humanity, weaving webs of melancholy, tugging on emotions and hoping to make people feel that pain in their bones.  I was never able to write when I was happy… there had to be something tragic happening to create those beautiful words and phrases.  That’s how I saw misery, as an exquisite, creative space to inhabit. 

I so didn’t have a clue about life.  I was so secure in my superior knowledge of what everything really meant.  I was arrogant about my intelligence, knowing that no one was right except me. Life had to knock me down into a real depression before I realized that it is not a good place to be.  I had to learn. 

I had to see for myself that misery does not love company and that it can barely stand to be in the same room with others.  That sadness can make it hard to breathe the way it clenches your heart.  I didn’t know how much depression hurt.  Before my bout, I was a poser, grasping at ideas from Romantic poets and Jim Morrison from The Doors.  Of course, they were all on drugs.  I was trapped in real pain for a long, long time.  I lost months of my life.  That was the toll that grief took on me.  And I recognize her now and shudder and do all the things I can do to keep her at bay.  I don’t want to lose myself in her heartbreak – I want to see the sun.

Of course, experience makes all the difference.  I was a late bloomer, in all things, from puberty to relationships, I never have followed what one would call a “normal” schedule.  And I came to redefine many of my terms in my late twenties and early thirties including intelligence, passion, seduction, happiness, wonderment, creation, beauty, and forgiveness. 

Probably the hardest thing anyone learns is how to forgive themselves and shake off those petty personas that we clutch to because we’re so afraid to be known for ourselves – who we really are.  It’s a dangerous game to let down those mysteries we shroud ourselves in and be seen, naked and ugly, before the world and to hell with judgment.  But I’ve done that and am stronger for it.

Now I embrace the happy days, life filled with beauty and joy, the smile on my son’s face, the sparkle in my husband’s eyes, the way the ducks waddle around oblivious to weather, and the magnificence of the peacock when he spreads out his tail.  There is beauty and magic in everything – we only have to look to see it.  We only have to open our eyes to be blinded by possibility.  I refuse to waste another day wasting away.  You should too.