Depression

I'm actually in a pretty darn great mood while I write this. Maybe it's better that way, to capture something while outside of it. (There's that one great quote for writers....Something to the effect of, "We write about what we miss." Maybe that's why I've spent so much time writing about my father, and now about Madison, and many other things.) Then again, maybe it's better to write about something while our heart is torn up with razor blades. In either case, I didn't have a chance until now for the day, but I wanted to say this:

Depression comes to us in the weirdest, most minute ways. I think that the micro captures the macro. In an interview, Alanis Morissette once said that she writes about love/relationships all the time because...how could she comprehend/work on/get better at the Larger Issues in Life (i.e. WAR) if she can't work on the one-on-one relationships first. This is a very wise comment. (And Alanis DOES write about war a lot. She might best capture this in her song "Still" from the Dogma soundtrack.)

My micro depression moment today: I was just about to get on my computer to write. The sun/rain hadn't come up yet, and I'd just finished my first cup of coffee. I looked outside on the back patio, and there was one of Ollie's plush squeezie toys, the baby porcupine one. It was sitting out in the rain, getting drenched. Now this isn't unusual; many of Ollie's toys get left out there. He likes to wrestle with them and toss them around like he's some kind of bad-ass. But what struck me so completely in that moment was this wave of sadness -- Mom had just washed them yesterday, made them fresh and dry and fluffy and pure, and now one had already ended up back outside to get dirtied and mucked-up again. How silly, one part of my brain told me. How trite. How not important. But really, sometimes I think we need the little things--the literally little things, like a porcupine toy--so that we can hold them in our hands and say, Yes, you aren't clean anymore, yes, you fit in my palm and I thus understand you. My depression was "small" but I could taste its edges and understand their reasons for existing. And maybe if I can "get" or comprehend the tiny things then the bigger ones will end up a touch more manageable.

These tiny moments cripple me at times. I mean, I'm just fucking floored by them. I get swallowed. But I always pull myself back out, that's the thing. And I really don't mind them. Depression can be a helpful, instructive thing if we let it be. When I meet people who say, "I never get depressed," I'm always thinking, "Are you for real?" I don't think we need to wallow in it or let it be an excuse to not live our lives, but it certainly is a part of everyone's soul, and it plays its part, and it's unhealthy not to acknowledge it. So, yeah, I get crippled (plastered by the Mac Trucks of Micro Moments) but then I heal, and I'm stronger than before.