this is not medical advice and it’s not mental health advice this is just me.
I’m trying to survive a depressive episode, which means I’m pushing myself out the back door and into the yard as often as I can stomach it. There are weeds out there that need attention, and I might not be able to feel it now but intellectually, I know the dirt is good for me.
Depressive Episode Frankie is always congested with an oppressive emptiness. Every thought or feeling that could possibly exist has been encased in lead. In this state, there is nothing that I want or that I know or that I am. I exist by sheer happenstance, and any knowledge of anything I ever cared about has been buried under the staticky nothing.
So I’m out in the yard trying to remember that life has meaning. And that apparently, this act of nurturing growth and partnering with the land at one point felt deeply fulfilling and joyous. Even though right now…it just is. I find myself far more in tune with how much there is left to do than I am with what I have accomplished. The multitude of weeds still safely in the earth is telling me that my two hands won’t make a difference against their legion of seeds and I might as well go back inside.
Sometimes I listen to them.
Other times, like today, I imagine the sunshine melting away the black tar clogging my fascia and my mind, warming the substance making everything so heavy and hard and slow. The light hits it as I work, holds it in her warm gaze, and its rubber starts to soften. Begins to ooze. Thick, inky drops are squeezing out of my pores, where they release and sit, a gleaming bead. In this state, it looks beautiful, just a tiny tourmaline orb that couldn’t possibly be the same thing that’s been making life feel so overwhelming and undoable. And then the breeze swoops along and carries it out of sight. Blob by blob it’s all creeping out of me and blowing away, until black drops fill the air like bubbles. And I start to feel lighter again, more present and possible. I imagine each muscle and the marrow of every bone - which were just a moment ago saturated with angry slime - now infused with opalescent light. The same space where stuckness reigned now glows with the energy of pure potential.
By evening my brain will probably have generated new sludge to replace what drifted away. The impenetrable nothing may have returned. But it will not be quite as easy for me to forget that lightness exists, or that closeness with myself feels better than the alternative, or that trying is cool and sexy.
And that is a massive win on the days when nothing sounds fun. When nothing sounds fun, it’s easy to assume that the best option is to let the time slick past as thoughtlessly as possible. Scrolling, watching a baseball game I swore I would ignore in favor of writing, googling a million things that don’t matter and that I don’t care about just to give my brain a feelings-free rabbit hole to fall down. Trying to fully ignore life. But over and over again, when I get just a moment to look up, I find that what I’m truly craving is connection and presence, even when fighting for it feels like the furthest thing from natural.
I might be a useless grey trash heap, but I am somehow still the best person to talk to, the best person to be. The moment I let myself lean towards that, light starts to peek around the corner again.
It seems that when trying to survive a depressive episode, the work - as always - is to return return return.
Go outside and put your hands in the earth.
Pick up a pen and write out how it feels, even if you just did that five minutes ago and you’re filling up page after page with the same thoughts over and over.
Stretch for 15 minutes, and ignore the voice telling you that 15 minutes feels like an eternity, far too long for stretching.
Take deep breaths without worrying about if they’re worth it or if they’ll cure you.
Don’t beat yourself up when they don’t. Don’t wonder what you did wrong when the heaviness sneaks back in and you’re not fixed after all. Just return again. And again.
Maybe the reason I’m not fixed is because there’s nothing to fix. Maybe this isn’t some damning failure or problem, maybe this is just the experience I’m having right now.
Maybe if I stop flailing against the nothingness and instead turn my effort to remaining close to myself throughout it, I’ll find it to be no scarier than the darkness of night. Which, yes, absolutely refuses to be rushed…but also naturally releases its hold in time for the sun to rise, every time.
Just a few weeks ago I was walking at the river worrying that maybe the swallows weren’t returning to their nests under the bridge for another spring, because the invasive house sparrows that had taken up residence in the empty swallow homes were still up there squawking away. And yet this morning there they were, swooping over the water happily, back in their rightful place.
Last month I was thought maybe the wildflowers weren’t growing in my backyard this year after all, and today there are Black Eyed Susans and Blanketflowers and Winecups in droves.
It can’t always be spring. But it won’t always be winter, either.
Even when it looks doubtful, nature knows how to return. And so, it seems, do I.
as i said, this essay is not medical advice or mental health advice and i’d appreciate us keeping the comment section free from advice as well. instead, tell me how you’re feeling, how you relate or don’t relate, ask questions, share reflections. i am thrilled to get to hear from you.
Crying while reading this, feeling wholly seen by the way you describe it. I beat myself up too often for not caring or feeling excited about anything. I feel completely separate from the part of me who is full of sun and doesn't need all the answers. I am scared this summer will be the same as the past ones. But I also know that I am brand new this time. Thank you, Frankie. Sending all the love!
Girl, I've been there -- although not exactly as you, of course. Bless you for taking the time and energy to write and share this AWESOME meditation on your depression and how we might respond/care for ours. I agree 💯 that ☀️ + dirt + weeds = good medicine. Big love and respect. 💖💖💖