On depression

For about 10 years now I've known that I'm diagnosed with depression. Upon going to therapy and receiving psychiatric treatment with the therapy I've come to terms with the fact that this will be a lifelong condition. One of the things that has always helped me cope with my depression, even before I knew that I had it, is writing what I feel. Poetry has always been easier to write in this way but I want to write a description of depression which ought not be read as universal or necessary. I'd prefer to say that it's phenomenological, in its own way. But I want to write it because I know that one of the feelings of depression is feeling like you are alone, and that this is a scary emotion which I've felt -- and as I said I find it therapeutic to write my feelings. 

Upon naming it and coming to understand which feelings and behaviors I have that are associated with depression it's not so bad -- it's just the thing that I get to deal with. Most people have some struggle in life, and I'm learning how to deal with mine all too slowly, but in a positive direction.

My favorite analogy for depression is a car analogy. Depression is when your clutch stops working. Abstractly, though, depression is a disconnect from A:B, where A is feeling and B is action, but the desire for the feeling of doing nothing is something that can never be satisfied. In an interpretation of Epicurus it is a groundless desire -- neither necessary nor natural, but something that can grow beyond itself. And yet in spite of thinking this way the feelings of depression arise: Anxiety which leads to sadness which, over time, leads to a disconnect from my emotions. That's when I feel like doing nothing at all -- depression. And for myself that leads to suicidal ideation,  a too-dark thought to reiterate when I believe it to be quite common, though I hasten to caution that depression is too much a catch-all. 

Even so I attempt a description. There are stages of depression. I wonder to what extent a description of these stages would even be worthwhile. There's a story here about myself before, during, after, and after-after, and after-after-after depression here which is just a series of strange events I cannot connect.

At the most general I believe depression to be a cycle -- from A to B to C to A to B to . . . etc. There are ways of breaking out of the cycle. And it doesn't matter how long it's been there are strategies that you can try. At the very least while I still have these feelings I now feel like I can live with these feelings, whereas before I thought it better to die. So I can say that I figured out a way of living with depression, and would like to hope that everyone else who struggles with it can too.