Depression, Etc. (#2)

HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN A PROBLEM LIKE DEPRESSION (with thanks to "The Sound of Music")

When I try to think of how to explain clinical depression to people, it can be a real task. How do you make the explanation understandable without denigrating its effect of bleak hopelessness? How do you make the explanation accessible enough so that you don't push the listener away by making him/her think that you develop seven arms and twelve eyes at your lowest point.
Here are a few images that I've come up with for different levels of depression that I experience.

Depression is

-- an empty room after a party. I'm left cleaning up beer cans, party favors, and decorations. The room is totally destroyed and I haven't even had any fun.

-- a well-travelled, but mysterious elderly man who insists that I keep him company in his
dark, red mansion library. He serves me tea but then stares silently at the floor while I stare at
him (this is how I might feel near my lowest level).

-- an angry sea monster that I'm attached to and from which there's no escape. He swims too fast for me to catch a good breath and keeps going further out into the ocean, pulling me down into the dark water and back up to the gray surface of the water, down and up, down and up.

-- being pulled into quicksand while people watch. But these people are too consumed by their jewelry to help me escape.

-- a cold meal served on a single plate that sits on a large, beautiful, lonely dinner table.

-- my breath in the cold. I can see it but it escapes too quickly to grasp it.

-- being kicked in the head by a clumsy and ill-mannered monster who will never apologize.

-- a silent bird.

-- a balloon that engulfs my head.

-- gum stuck in my hair (this might represent my depression when it's not so bad. It's more of an annoyance, but it's a persistent sucker).

Those are some of my images. At the deepest point of my depression I don't have enough strength for my imagination to be active. It's almost as if I'm recovering from surgery and everything but my spirit has been pulled out of me, so that I'm left hollow. While my spirit is still there, it feels so very distant that I cannot access it. However, my spirit is still there, way under there.

RESOURCES OF NOTE

Two fantastic books that give insight into deep depression are

Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression, Nell Casey, Ed. This book deals with many forms of depression and I ate it up when I got it. It was so enthralling, like a good friend you haven't seen in a while. The book includes a series of essays by different writers who have depression or who have dealt with someone else's depression.

Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron. I've told so many people that I think this book contains the best illustration I've found of what it feels to be deeply depressed. A suicidal depression hit Styron (author of Sophie's Choice) around the age of sixty. He was left dumbfounded by its effects. I sought out this book's refuge one time when I was feely highly suicidal during my latest bout with depression. I needed to know why anyone would desire to live or could have the strength to make it in this world. I remembered an excerpt from this book in Unholy Ghost and decided I had to read it right away, almost as my own prescription. I think I read the whole thing in one night and was crying by the end. He told me why I wanted to live. Granted, it didn't make me change my mind immediately. And I still occasionally feel suicidal, but that comes with the sticky territory of depression. My suicidal thoughts are more ideation than planning. As the saying goes, it's more bark than bite. Still, it's hard to escape how devastating it feels. I'll get into more of this in a later entry.

I leave you with this thought-- depression is a dingbat demon.