Words To Uninspire

I have come to fear the deepest depths of my depression.

Or let's say "had come."

The despair, gripping me each day, lasting a couple weeks, or a couple months

I never knew when I might finally strip my skeleton of it.

When I did ... a true person would emerge. A "real me." I feel it, and I've been told it.

That me is someone I love.

Why does it have to come at such a price?

**
Let's say today I no longer fall into debilitating episodes of depression. Nor do I find myself usurped by the counterpart manic state.

Let's say every day is like the next.

Except that you know it isn't.

But it is.

I've lost myself by trying to find it.

It feels as foreign as the language of hope and faith.

They ring hollow.

You know, Christmas is here. We now live in an old cottage in the North Main area of town, small but the plaster walls dampen the sound of people living out their internal dialogue.

Boy, is it going to be beautiful ... when Christmas is here.

But it is here. But it isn't.

It's just ... me.

Me. Me. Me.

As I reach the supposed half point of my life, I feel like I have lived these lives that defined themselves and unfolded with each passing year.

I feel like I've heard it all before. Even I haven't heard it, or seen it, I've heard or seen something like it.

I'm inspired by people. Their lives of hope and faith and compassion and thanksgiving.

But my inspiration is confined.

I recognize them - but no longer with the empathy that made life so difficult for me.

I'm better off now. Yeah. Put together. So stable. Reasonable. Fair. Less combustible

I'm numb inside. That lack of inspiration you feel from me? It's real.

The sounds of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" register as something beautiful in my life.

But I can neither tap into the past nor the present.

I can't even feel it for my kids. I don't feel their pain, or their joy, and I don't offer them any vision and insight for their lives.


Here's your house. Here's your friends. Here's your Christmas tree. Go ... feel it.

It's not here and it's not there.

The present, past and future ... nowhere.

I can live like this the rest of my life. Despite so much change, change each and every day, no one day means any more than the next.

Entanglements no longer trap me. Embraces no longer comfort me, because I have so little to give.

I used to have so much more.

Life will move forward as I decline.

Is this what depression feels like now?

Nothingness, but not the kind that brings you to your knees?

It's from that vantage point that I become who I am.

But the path to illumination is shrouded in muted, diluted fear of something I no longer feel.