Depression Has Reentered the Chat
Sit with it and see what story it longs to tell
It’s back. Enough pieces fell. And this time, the depression has a story to tell. It has a lesson to teach. It has a song to sing, which calls you towards your inner world, where there is a table, a mirror, and a blank page.
It’s not happening without reason. It’s not asking to be softened by conversation or diluted by substance. It sees the target on its chest. It is but a messenger from the dark.
It was hardened by the pains of experience it does not understand. And it can be released to the wolves of memory. It doesn’t have to soak in the cells and squeeze the muscles of your shoulders. Perhaps it’s tired, too—tired of holding your hips as you walk and squeezing your throat as you speak.
It has found comfort in the corners of your stomach and the slope of your lower back.
Breathe into the places where it is kept.
It doesn’t ask for advice or a quick fix. It knows not the words you speak or the thoughts it escorted to your mind’s door.
Like Dante, it is called to descend into an underworld of life’s making. It beckons you from the shadows you have been trying to avoid, where you can retrieve the pieces you have lost. It asks you to play in that faraway land of dreams banished by a morning’s first blink.
It wants you to mourn for the losses you carried but never held.
Depression can be the soaring spark that escapes the embers; it can breed new life and tempt the universe. “Show me that you know me.”
It’s not here to break you; it’s a breakable mold. It’s merely a shell formed during the dull dance with expectation and obligation. Release the shame, and find that love remains.
The depression lingers in the mind, but it departs from the body. When released, it allows space for a more authentic self to climb up, and step forward.
First, you have to meet it with curiosity, not resistance. Invite it in. Sit it down. Ask what story it has to tell.
Only then will it reveal the message it’s been aching to share. And yet, it has no story, for it lacks the words. Its message must be felt and transcribed.
Put the ink on the page. Then, within the safety of the present moment, sigh it from your body, and as it departs, give thanks for what it came to reveal.