When I Feel Depressed

Present-day intro

A note before you read: this one goes into the dark. And it also comes out the other side.

I’m publishing it here from the out side. Writing this at fifty years old, here on solid ground, and if you're somewhere in the dark right now, the resources at the bottom of this post are actual lifelines. And I’m here for you, too, if you need me.

I wrote this during a low season in 2018 and left it in my drafts, the way we leave the hard ones.

I'm publishing it now, barely touched, because pretending the low seasons don’t happen helps exactly no one, and because what this draft found at the bottom of the dark turned out to be true: the way through, for me, was by reaching out to other people.

Original draft - never published

Sometimes those shadows can feel like… Death… Inching closer… Depression definitely feels like a death of my spirit. Sometimes the path seems to lead directly and clearly towards the very destruction of… Me.

Or is it just the small-me?

Alcohol offered respite for awhile and of course, also, food and media, all those distractions and social inactions that seem like such good excuses, at the time, to little ol’ me.

I claimed so, so many habits and prescribed pharmaceuticals and people as my drugs of choice.

Some were more helpful than others and every medicine has its limits, of course…

And sometimes the medicine stops working all-together.

And then, what? More?

OR do we just keep inching deeper into that damn darkness?

Repeat ad nauseum until the nausea sets in?

How desperate will life need to feel inside us, body and mind, before we finally decide to DO something new or to create something new?

I think the aloneness is the worst part.

Not loneliness, mind you. Just that feeling of… Alone-ness. Inside your mess…

You know it?

I’ve felt it. And lived it.

And then I'll find my curiosity again in questions, like, what might the opposite of aloneness feel like…?

And for me? Of course, it’s connectedness.

Even when physical connection isn’t possible, I can find it virtually—say, on safe-spaces like Transmanifesto.

Or maybe I’ll lean into real-life people and things that are visible and outside of me, around me, and shining their lights and sharing their voices and showing me all the ways I might want to change.

So, now, when I feel myself sinking or slipping I’ll seek support from the legions of other and tribes of those people—like, the local artists and entrepreneurs; spiritual seekers; questioners and manifestors; those queers and sisters and misters from other mothers 'n misters.

You know…Those people.

When my feelings have gone, I have always, somehow, found a way to refocus my attention away from that unfeeling dark nothingness of depression,and back towards the lights of those people— MY people —as an acquired antidote for my depression.

Just those everyday, inspiring people who have also decided to take action and show up and make their change and create something new.

I used to sometimes feel jealous of those sorts of people.

Of course, it was just because their story wasn’t my story.

Of course, I didn’t care for my own story or my own body or my own work/art/ideas/life.

So, seeing those people and what they proved possible only made me realize how afraid I had been, and it made me ask how I might take similar actions or make similar shifts and create something new for myself. Instead of focusing only on that gnawing, growing nothingness of depression, I started feeling the desperation for change and the desperate helplessness and desperate hopelessness and desperate aloneness…

Yes, I loved it for gifting me with such darkness so I might finally find my own inner light.

So, yes, hell yes, I felt that. And I learned to focus on feeling the fear inside my body and mind.

I focused on how desperate I felt for something else...

After awhile, those people became my examples and my template to examine and question and adapt and implement my own changes and start creating new things..

RESOURCES:

If you’re in the dark right now, please don't do it alone...

Trans Lifeline: 877-565-8860 (peer support, run by and for trans people)

The Trevor Project (LGBTQ+ young people): 1-866-488-7386, or text START to 678-678

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988

And if you're somewhere in between being in crisis and being okay, please feel free reach out through my Connect page. I mean it. 💜