Depression and success

Depression is a weight. A heavy jacket you don't get to take off. It doesn't care where you are in life, what's happening with your work, your love, your friends, nor the world around you. In fact, the better things are going for your life, or for your friend's lives, the harder it seems to work to weigh you down. Depression follows you when you leave New York for Boston. Depression is in the car when you drive from Boston to Nashville, and it moves into your condo like an unwanted roommate. Depression is there when you win, and there when you lose. Hiding just beneath the surface on your best day, and throwing a parade and BBQ on your worst. There is treatment, medication, therapy, people who claim to be cured. But for many of us, it never really goes away.

Regardless of where it comes from; nature vs nurture (or lack thereof) it is there. When you meet someone new to date, someone you really are excited about, it screams at the top of it's lungs that you aren't worth their time. That you do not deserve them. That you are too broken to be of any use to another human's life. When you have a great career opportunity or a success, it stands right in front of you reminded you that you are worthless and that your endeavors will fail. That they make no difference to the world you are entering. That your entire existence is a burden to the world around you.

Dark stuff for sure. There is no snapping out of it. No 'pulling yourself up by the bootstraps'. I suppose people with faith have an easier go of it. I read studies, I love facts. Every study done shows that people who have faith in a higher power (be it jesus, allah, yaweh, adonai, a magic tree, chi, yoga energy force, etc), those people have much happier lives. Much lower rates of depression and suicide. Much stronger relationships with friends and family.

I received a card recently from a friend I have barely spent time with in this life. She sent it to me at one of my lowest points in memory. She couldn't have known how much pain I was in. No one could. But she felt she had to send it right then, at that moment in time. She knew. We have some link between us and I am so grateful. I was in tears reading the card. I try to read it when I can, but I find it too hard, too painful. I think, now in my 40's, I am starting to find a voice for some of these things. They have a name. It's more than depression. It's pain. Deep emotional and spiritual pain.

Pain is mixed into all that depression. Pain is the root cause of the frustration, the anger, the self-loathing. The unshakeable sense that one's life is a burden on others.