“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral’s Kiss
The haunting thick fog of depression that settles in through the cracks of our grief and loss and persists well beyond its welcome holds a horrific grasp upon our mourning. If you are looking for a more cheerful and motivating take on the suffering of this Black Care, today is not the day. Perhaps, tomorrow, a more helpful and hopeful essay on the rise from its clutches will evolve. But depression, the most massive stone that falls upon our hearts, mandates that an honest description precedes prescription. And for all its weight and all it’s persistence, there is much to say.
There is a cold and quiet shock after loss, that moment when you sit, somehow still inside yourself, while you shake in terror somewhere far outside your body. Every small background noise, once unnoticed, falls deafening upon your ears. Even your anatomy seems to shift in fluid form, melting: stomach into throat, tongue to roof of mouth, heart toward intestines, heartbeat into your eardrums, and eyes somewhere across the room watching. The amorphous mess you are in the suddenness of loss.
While every other emotional stage of grief seems to come and go, depression settles down upon you and fills your pores like smoke. When does bereavement transition into depression? Who cares- besides your therapist. These early moments, while the mind buzzes and ceases it usefulness, is when depression takes the opportunity to fill in all of the gaps in your shattered reality. While you deny, rage in anger, and bargain for your life back, distracted by the chaos, those blue devils are settling in for a long and lonely stay. Waves of every form of grief come and go from your shore, but this great sadness has anchored itself mercilessly to your soul.
As the shock slowly fades, and the flames calm to embers and ash, the cold empty version of you will be all that remains. How long must we suffer at this great affliction? Taste has abandoned your tongue, swallowing and deep breath become a conscious effort, focus will evade you at every routine task. Depression never brought a single answer, but a thousand questions. How? How can one person have the power to wreck my existence, my entire human experience? Why? Why would a loving God stand-by in our greatest time of need? Who? Who have I become in instant unawareness? When? When will this empty pain become tolerable? What? What will become of this broken heart? Job asked a thousand questions. But we don’t suffer as Job. For in his story, God finally answered, and restoration was paid for his obedience. No, our depression gathers at the corners of our lips as jealous anger toward Job and his loving God. What is depression? It is everything. It is you now. It is the eternal echo of the hammer against anvil reverberating off the canyon walls. It is embedded into your DNA to pass on for generations.
Nobody tells you that the depression that overlies our grief is a hungry beast. We feed it out of desperation, at first. The stage of mistakes- looking for a quick fix in another person, place, or thing. Later we make sacrifices to it- all things that once brought us joy. But hungry still we face it’s gaping fangs to wonder what might satiate this creature. Wise and shifty, depression never speaks, it introduces thoughts and feelings using your own voice. When it bears down upon us in this very moment and we hear those familiar words- “what I, Depression, crave to consume is you”- it is time to resist. With every last bit of self. With every hope you still might have in God. Resist. Depression doesn’t deserve your life. Somewhere you are something more than this beast upon you. Fight. Keep going through hell. One step at a time.
The very real fear is that in our grief we will become our depression. A cancer consuming every healthy cell. “[b]ecause wherever I sat- on the deck of a ship or a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok- I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.” (Sylvia Plath, the Bell Jar). It is an ever present air that we breath. It fits like heavy wet clothing. It is holes in your socks on a cold winter night. How do we resist it becoming our identity and following us to a welcomed grave? I don’t know. All I know is that what eventually feels the best is throwing everything back at it- striking that beast in the mouth. We have little control in this new world of grief. Giving up and letting depression define us is one more loss that we, perhaps, cannot afford. Look to the literature, the historical figures who suffered, your family, your God. Look back at that happy person you were before the Black Dog grabbed him by the throat. You owe him something. He has suffered more than he deserved.
