waiting for my life to start

The thing about depression for me is the shift in the horizon line.  

It's like you are traveling along on flat ground with everybody else, and suddenly you end up alone at the bottom of a steep valley.  

Sometimes it's a canyon or even a cave, but mostly it's a simple, plain dark valley.  Silent, cool, windswept. Grey hillsides that slope upwards alarmingly around you.

I have learned not to stop walking. 

But if I had been running or skipping before landing there, well, that's all over.  

The climb out is slow, and it hurts. Gravity is harsh. The steps are over colorless stones around leafless trees and flowerless shrubs.  The ground is mushy and damp. Not slipper but stubbornly weighted. 

Each journey out is different.  Months, weeks, days, hours... as different as the reason for falling in.  

But there are commonalities.  Like the questions that float as storm clouds: "when is my real life going to begin?" "What is the point of all this" "nothing matters," "nothing makes sense anymore"...

It's that feeling of deep failure or wasted time or inadequacy, false shadows—a threatening storm to avoid getting caught up in. A sky of doubt distracting you from moving forward.  Dark, swirling weather not to be encouraged. Tornados, not to be crossed. 

Looking like you are standing still; you walk. Seemingly getting nowhere but working harder than you think yourself capable of doing.  Walking without reason. Walking without will.  Walking without true direction. And nothing seems to change.

Yet slowly, almost unperceivable light begins to leak in. Dark greys fade to watery blues.  Green pebbles appear. Finally, there is the spot where you can see the slope breaking, giving way to flat ground. 

One foot in front of the other over the edge into a place like the sunrise. Dark and light and color all at the same time. Then the beauty of it is gone.  Spread out across the day, diluted and mundane.    

You find yourself out of the valley, back where you started right before you fell in. Standing in the pieces of your life. Gathering them up, shaking them off, and moving on. Traveling with the world once again.

The memory of the valley and its darkness rolls with you.

For me, depression is the dark contrast that makes my world so sharply beautiful. Waiting for my life to start for the hundredth time. Born over and over from the valley of darkness into a world of light.  

I am a collector of moments.