I went home last night and felt a huge rush of depression settle in, “darker than lights-out in a closet full of hungry bats” as Charles Bukowski said. I’ve gotten so tired of feeling depressed though. I spent much of 2022 and 2023 in undulating waves of it, fervently trying to claw my way out. It worked, the clawing, I mean. Depression is interesting because I think it has so much less to do with general sadness and so much more to do with a loss of hope, the collapse of the future.
When I was really happy, during the pandemic, I remember I would think about the word future. I loved it so much, it felt so bright and shiny, like an unknown reality waiting to be imagined and birthed. When it got dark, the future felt inaccessible. Like I wasn’t permitted to expand beyond the scope of my current circumstances. That my life would just be all it had ever been.
It was romantic rejection that sent me plunging so deeply into depression. I remember finding a Carl Jung line that struck a chord: the greatest darkness is always found through the opposite sex. A telling thought. We always envision romance, dating, to play out like a magical fairytale. Barbie finds Ken, Ariel finds Eric, Cinderalla finds her Prince. And then you go on Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, and watch countless hours, read countless comments, consume countless posts, about heartbreak, disappointment, loss. None of this ever unraveled like a fairytale. In fact, I think it shocks us to our core, waking up dark demons inside us, ones that we thought we put to rest long ago.
Last night I cupped thoughts of rejection in my hands and swirled them around, looking at it from different angles. Why did it hurt so much? I realized that I spent so many years in and out of therapy, reading books on relationships, emotionally rebuilding myself from a catastrophic upbringing. I flung my offerings, my growth and energy, and watched people wince and turn their nose. I realize now that rejection felt like years of work being returned with derision and darkness. It was the wall that would never break.
I think looking for love became the valve with which I explored the potential for my life. Every rejection felt like proof that I was tethered to what my parents did to me, that I could not expand beyond the damage they inflicted on my life. If you spend enough time working on a problem, eventually things piece together. This past spring I curled up in an Airbnb overlooking Lake Atitlan, flooded by safety and calm. Flashpoint. Years of darkness, a long held dream, its slow crawl to the surface of my reality. I keep showing my fingers how to graze the edges of possibility.
a soft death 