The Other Side of the Storm
Posted Sun Jun 16, 2002 in
Depression
June 2005: I used to have another introduction to this piece, but I decided to delete it and rewrite the introduction. For the three years and change I’ve been writing this weblog, I’ve been dealing with a clinical depression. In fact, I believe that I’ve dealt with clinical depression all of my life.
There is no way that someone who hasn’t experienced depression can understand what it feels like. They just can’t relate. In many ways, that’s a good thing. I don’t want anyone to understand how it feels. But, that means that they can’t relate to the depressive. Well-meaning people say things to me that just aren’t realisitic. There is no way to pull oneself out of the state. If there is, then it isn’t clinical depression; it’s the blues.
During one of my down cycles I was really struggling. I was in what I’ve termed the hole. A series of images came to me, partly in my dreams and partly during my waking. They seemed to convey something of what the depressive state is like, so I wrote them down and published them in my weblog. I called the work, The Other Side of the Storm.
The Other Side of the Storm
On the high plains, the horizon seems miles and miles away. On a clear day, the west Texas sky is huge and a deep blue, particularly where I live. That is, the sky is that deep blue unless it’s brown from dust blowing in the air. One day, far off in the distance, I see the premonition of a gathering storm. It’s mostly a line on the horizon, a barely-present darkening of the ever-blue sky.
Days later the winds kick up and begin to blow. The things around me common to my experience, and comforting, are blown away, leaving me in a strange place — a place that is both familiar and alien, simultaneously. Although I’m surrounded by my family and friends, they are somehow not the same as they were, nor are they as they should be. My sight is clouded and distorted but I don’t understand why. I feel confused and my footing is shaky.
As the advance guard of the storm gathers before me, I see its approach. It doesn’t look too bad, but for the wind. The storm blows in, darkening my already estranged sight, making the friends and family who surround me more out of focus and distorted. The sounds that penetrate my gloom make no sense, as if my ears hear but my mind no longer comprehends language. I see mouths move but can do no more than know they speak to me. It is a dark place I’m in, but comforting somehow. I am removed from the pain that always accompanies me.
The worst of the storm passes. The place I’m in is not so dark and I’m less confused. I can understand language again, but my vision is not as sharp as I expect. Life seems normal, so, I shrug it off.
A few days later the winds begin blowing again. They blow sharply, this time carrying me to different places and to different people; I am not static. I do what I must for a few days when the winds come again. But my vision is still not clear. Things are not in sharp focus. People are difficult for me to understand. I’m confused, but not incommuncative.
Then, early one morning, I hear the gathering of another storm. It’s still dark outside, but I can tell by the sound it’s a bad one. Thunder booms and lightning flashes illuminate the room like a strobe. The starkness of that view blinds me and I sit up, startled and blinking. Then the worst happens — a tornado strikes, thrusting me from comfort into a violence of wind, rain, and hail. I lose my footing and fall into a hole. It is a bad, dark place, and the flash of lightning makes the sides appear to be the pained faces of gargoyles, twisted and grotesque. I would be frightened if feelings happened, but cannot feel a thing. The sides are steep and slippery and I cannot climb out. My legs fold beneath me and I sit in the muck. I despair.
As I sit in the dark my vision clears a little. I can see a bit and hear a little more, and know that the worst of the storm has passed. Still I cannot climb from of the hole. It is too deep. It is too dark. It is too slick. I sit, alone, clutching the tattered remnants of my being about me like a friendly old t-shirt one cannot throw away. The despair remains.
When I think I can bear it no more, a strong hand, the hand of the One I love most, reaches through my gloom and clasps mine. “Come out!” calls the Voice. I look up, not understanding and unable to respond. “Come Out!” the Voice calls again, more imperative than before. I reach up and the grip is strong. Scrabbling up the wall, half climbing, half lifted, I escape the hole, but not alone and not unscathed. I stand next to the One, shaking and weak but with my feet beneath me, and feel arms about me, comforting me. My vision clears a little more.
I look and I see the other side of the storm, receding to the east. I see the damage left behind it, a kind of fallout from the storm’s barrage and the sight is not pretty. But I survive.
This is about different things, as I read it...
I personally thought the writing was very good. It grabbed my attention, and kept me guessing.
And I like the line:"I sit, alone, clutching the tattered remnants of my being about me like a friendly old t-shirt one cannot throw away. The despair remains."
— toxiclabrat 16 June 2002, 11:31 #Need to put that one to music, my friend...
— TreyJ 17 June 2002, 23:50 #