Dancing in the Dark

What Depression Looks Like:

Looking forward to when it's dark enough to crawl in bed without feeling guilty

Crawling in bed while it's still light and not caring

Saying no when you mean yes

Not answering the phone

Wishing someone would call and stay on the line without talking, just so you feel connected

Not washing your hair for three days

Cutting your hair short to match your sexless mood

Going alone to a sad movie so you can cry in the dark for a reason

Forgetting to eat

Eating to forget

Hiding behind sunglasses, as if the world can't see you when you've darkened it

Not dancing when you hear music that used to move you

Moving behind the music to let it dance on you instead

Realizing that you haven't absorbed a word of the last several pages you just read

Realizing you haven't heard a word of what someone just said

Knowing that you missed the above two because you left your body a while back

Watching movies every day to live someone else's life rather than your own

Straining to remember how it felt to dance wildly, laugh from your belly, celebrate the light

Knowing that in time, you will remember, it will all come back to you and you'll forget how this felt

Praying that it is soon

Remembering that you lost your religion a long time ago

Praying anyway

Comments

[Courtney]

beautiful..

[Paula]

Yes, that's depression all right. I'm sorry that you know it as well as you do. It is a true gift to be able to write about pain so beautifully. Thank you for sharing your gift with me today.

[Loretta]

It is a dance I know well and wish I could erase from my body language.

[Fran]

As a person who lives with low-grade chronic depression every day, and has experienced gut-wrenching hospitalizations twice for depression, you have hit the nail on the head. What I'm really, really glad to see is that you aren't using metaphorical suicide wishes as part of the poem.

[Sharon]

What a powerful thought-provoking post!

[D]

excellent blog. as Paula says, thank you for sharing your gift.

[Mel]

I felt like that the other day. That photo captures it perfectly.

[John]

You've been reading my mail.

[Judi]

What a beautiful post. Thanks for sharing your talent.

[ags]

I have always wondered why cutting hair feels so right in those times. Native Americans do that to show their grief, in the movie "Frida", she cut her hair after her husband cheated, I cut my hair when I was devestated. I think you said it right "to match your sexless mood". I never realized what exactly it was. Besides showing on the outside how ugly you feel on the inside, it is to cut off anything that used to make you feel desired because that it gone too.

[Lena]

Thank you. It's all beautiful to read.

[Margy Houtz]

Thank you. I read this yesterday and it stayed in my mind, poking at me uncomfortably...there were too many "me
too"s and at 8PM last night, I reluctantly came out of my denial and accepted that the Black Dog had returned; indeed, he's been nosing around for 3 or 4 months, I just was ignoring him. After a sleepless night of anger, frustration, shame and sadness, I called my doctor, saw him this morning, am adjusting my meds (for the umpteenth time), and am restarting weekly therapy sessions. You would think after a lifetime (I'm 63) of this, I would "get it" sooner...

Please keep writing about it as the spirit moves you.

[moon]

deep sigh.........yes. And I know those feelings all too well. It's an endless struggle. Thanks for putting those hard feelings into words.

[Karl]

You've got my head spinning. I don't think I've ever seen depression so perfectly described. I fight it, too...have all of my life. Strange to know that there are millions who suffer similarly and yet still feel totally alone. *sigh*

[Alli]

Thank you for this, it makes me feel like I am not completely alone or just making this stuff up as I go along. That there's a rhythm to depression.

I found this while I was looking for hair + depression, because I just had my hair highlighted 2 weeks ago on my parents' dime and then when they went away to Russia, I bleached it and then dyed it back to a dark, dark brown and cut it again into a bob. I guess it needed to be cut anyway, but I just feel like I wasn't ready to have light hair again. Eating, cutting, dying, it's all just trying to hide.

Thank you for helping me, too.

[Cara Fletcher]

This is one really good description of depression and what it feels like to feel this.It's really difficult sometimes and some people find it impossible to overcome it even with all kinds of medications and doctors.

[Melgallant.wordpress.com]

beautifully said. depression is a struggle...in so many different ways.

[My-demon.blogspot.com]

oh my god, wow. it feels like i wrote that. woah.