Depression is my superpower

I'm depressed. Not acutely. Not newly.

I feel like an addict. I won't ever be not depressed; I just live with it. It's my superpower - the ability to detect the pathos in any situation.

As I've learned to live with being depressed, I have begun to think of it just that way. I feel like the Hulk in The Avengers. His secret is that he's angry all the time, and in the same way, I'm always sad. Even when I'm happy, I'm sad.

I don't think depression is what gets you though. I think it's feeling dissatisfied with feeling depressed. It's the wanting to feel better. It's wanting to leave your little rain cloud behind for a day. So a few years ago, I decided to try accepting it, to try to see the sun while the rain is falling.

I'm a stronger person for it, unfazed by things that distress others. I'm working at the hospital these days, and hospitals are difficult, hard places. People are damaged and dying, hurt and suffering and often frightened. And it's fine. Those are the things I see when I look at everyone - their smiles usually covering the inevitable tragedies of life. When those truths are exposed and immediate, it feels like a kind of honesty. There is honor in witnessing those truths, leaning in, and helping how you can. I feel at home in a place where everyone is suffering.

I don't know if that's normal, but what's normal anyway? It's like my whole life has been preparing me to feel the kind of empathy that will help me do my job well.

I don't have any grand conclusions about this just yet, nothing spectacularly smart to say. But the utility of depression, the need to do good so that you can see good, has been on my mind lately. It's what gets me out of bed when my own personal struggles seem too hard that day. I'm not dying, not today. So I choose to think about someone else, to use my power for good, to get up and do my best.

Comments

2011 Reading Challenges

On the first day of this new year, I am pulling together the reading challenges in which I want to participate. There are so many that sound interesting that I'm not doing, particularly a bunch of them that are regional authors, which I'm trying to cover with my Global Reading Challenge. I've chosen a bunch of them, but the problem won't be reading quantity, but more like reading strategy. I read 3 or 4 books a week and most of these challenges allow crossovers, so I see no problems reading enough books, merely reading the right books and then, perhaps more challenging, writing about them, which some challenges require, and some only suggest. Either way, it's a neat way to prioritize reading for the coming year. The Challenges in Which I Shall Participate Southern Literature Challenge - I've never read enough Southern Lit, and while some of the newer stuff is truly awful, I'd like to explore some older books. It's any book set in the South by a S

Alie & Georgia are lushes.

Last night I hosted an Alie & Georgia cocktail birthday party. We went from 8 to 2 and tried 8 different cocktails. There was also ice cream cake and a hookah bc, well, I throw good parties, and Jeremy deserves nothing less. There would have been a fire pit, but something, something sleet. The fact that we only got to try 8 means there can be more Alie & Georgia parties in future bc there are so many left! I would have included more pictures, but we were, uh, too distracted to take them. And now, a review: Drunken Donuts Our first cocktail of the evening, I decided to serve these as little shots with a Spudnut garnish bc they are 2 parts alcohol to 1 part coffee. They contain staggering quantities of espresso vodka, coffee liqueur, and chocolate liqueur. A shot was about as much as you need, despite the recommended serving of a mug! of the stuff. This was our first hint that Alie & Georgia must be lushes with liver related super powers. On a side note, these were

Peony by Pearl S. Buck

I read a book today. A whole book. It was pretty wonderful, both the experience and the book. I'm not sure what led me to suddenly decide to read some Pearl S. Buck. I've long looked at her book covers and thought, One day , but for some reason the melancholy that I've always mentally associated with her (for no reason I can cite) fit feeling like death today, so in the waiting room at the Urgent Care I started reading Peony and I read until I was finished, through the brewing of tea and my hot bath which I had hoped would clear my sinuses and did not. I want to start it all over again. I feel like I devoured it so quickly that there are things I missed, conversations I want to have with the book and my thoughts that I didn't give myself time to have. A few thoughts though, before I lose the thread. There are so many dichotomies in this book, so many choices weighed and options considered. David must choose between the old ways of his people represented by marriage

Land of Lakes and Volcanoes

Search This Blog