Dreams in the Castle of Melancholy

Posted by JohnD Sun, 03 Aug 2008 23:56:00 GMT

I wrote recently here about masking emotions from myself as I grew up through my college years. Here’s what happened to change that, or at least start me on a different path. As often happens with me, it started in a dream:

For so long, I lived in a beautiful fortress made of defiant walls. It stood remote in sheltered hills, safe from attack at any angle, approached only over steep rugged trails that few could manage. I often flew over it in dreams, its great length and height visible in every detail, almost touchable in my smoothly gliding passes. I would sail higher to see more clearly the narrow isthmus between great continents in which it lay hidden. But always I would wake in stillness within it.

Daily I strummed inside its intricate corridors. They never grew familiar, no matter how many times I walked them, mentally mapping each turn and door. The picture never stayed in my mind for long. In a vast structure of dark rooms I could be lost for days, looking for light in windowless corners, testing each door for new discoveries. At times, its night-like shadows would envelope me in comforting invisibility. I could see nothing, nothing could see me.

Dropping Depression

Posted by JohnD Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:15:00 GMT

Photo Credit: JesterArts at Stockxpert

As she often does, Stephany put a thought in my mind that I haven’t been able to shake. It was a three-word comment: “You have recovered.” Nice wish, I thought, if only – ! I’ve been working on recovery so long – it just isn’t happening consistently. But the problem with interpreting this as a wish was her strange use of past rather than future tense (You have recovered). So the words kept coming back to me, and I didn’t know what to do with them. Finally, I started thinking: Well, what if we suppose for a minute or an hour that the statement – all three words of it – were true, not so much for me, but for someone? After all, decades ago I did some acting. Couldn’t I just play this part for a while? And if I did, how exactly would I, as this someone, feel? And what would I say? This could take a lot of research, I thought, but I needed to start somewhere. And the first thing would be – kicking that idiot Depression out of my life – I mean his life – the life of the guy I would pretend to be.

After jotting down a few words for this character to say, I kind of caught the spirit of this recovered thing and started to feel something unusual stirring. I heard odd bursts of laughter and then realized with a shock – hey, that’s me – I mean, of course, he, the guy I was portraying. I – he – felt really good, giggly, smiley – bizarrely out of character – my character, that is. This character, however, was recovered and so could be expected to be happy, giddy even, at having pushed depression out of his life after decades of doom and gloom. Here’s the sort of thing he (well, I, acting in the role of recovered person) might well be saying:

You Are So Beautiful

Posted by JohnD Sat, 14 Jun 2008 18:28:00 GMT

Some Rights Reserved by denis collette at Flickr

There is a powerful moment in the film, Tender Mercies, when the lead character, hearing of the death of someone close to him, says he hates happiness. “You can’t trust it.” I think I took in lessons like that when young and for a long time was fearful of a happiness that seemed to depend on being with someone. And that was the only happiness or fulfillment I could imagine since I felt then so empty on my own, so unworthy of any place in the world at all. But then it happened that I met that one who became my life partner. She kicked and poked at depressed thinking long and hard enough to help me start seeing around it, seeing myself in that state as someone I didn’t want to be.

I could begin to understand my down-staring face wasn’t all that I amounted to. And she could scream enough into my soul to get the message through that love was an offering that had to be taken in and returned, that it demanded to meet a responding energy and affection coming from that deep place. She helped wake me up to my own humanness and hence to the possibility of healing, of being filled with an awareness of a life so different from what I was used to, a life where inner peace could be found.

Connecting Out of Depression

Posted by JohnD Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:34:00 GMT

Some Rights Reserved by Spigoo at Flickr.

Does recovery ever happen this way for you? Something quietly takes you out of yourself?

My room at the inn on the Olympic Peninsula coast looked out broadly on the foggy beach, an early morning panorama grayed out by the ground-level cloud. I tried to discern outlines through that broken mass rolling in from the Pacific. I was struggling to reach through a confused depression to find any clear thing to connect with, something out there, on the shore, apart from me yet a link to the surviving stirrings of life that could bring me out of this dark mood.

I stared at the gray drizzling morning, light wind gently gusting – the water white, waves breaking a hundred yards out, their shallow ripples foaming toward the exposed flats. I had heard there was a record low tide, opening the huge, wet sand-apron of the beach. The mists kept roiling in and out, dissolving the scene for a time, then revealing the great muddy flat again. All at once, I saw dark figures moving about, first just a few, then in the sudden clearing, many small clusters of people. Who or what were they? Barely emerging from the grays of mist, the glistening shore, gray rain, these people weren’t just strolling about – they had purpose. Then I realized they must be out there for the great razor clams buried in the sand, available now because of the low tide.

Older posts: 1 2 3

Writing to Recover Life from Depression

Dreams in the Castle of Melancholy

Dropping Depression

You Are So Beautiful

Connecting Out of Depression

About

Categories

Recent Comments

From My Library

Experience Project

Tags

Top Posts

Helpful Blogs

Copyright

Archives

References