A deep breath this morning as I sit down. Salted coffee, and blackbirds outside the window. I didn’t write yesterday, but spent a full day with a new printer: learning to adjust for paper weights, manual feed, and double-sided pages. A lot of trial and error. Small steps forward. Or sideways.
No: I am moving forward again.
I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I got my first pair of glasses. But I remember looking at a tree and realizing that you are supposed to see the individual leaves on trees. My eyesight had deteriorated so gradually I hadn’t noticed what I had lost of the world.
This week I feel like I can see the leaves on the trees. It’s not that life is less crowded, but it is more vibrant. Distinguishing the foreground from the background, wresting meaning from it all is easier.
There is a saying that things having gradually then all at once. But these past years, things happened all at once, and then so gradually that I thought changes were improvements, or at least adjustments. I didn’t see the signs of depression because the everyday problems were so tiny compared to the crisis that began it all. How could I be having trouble getting through the day when the worst was over a long time ago?
My world is popping back into three dimensions. Other people seem more substantial. I realize how odd that sounds. I don’t mean that in comparison with how I perceived myself, I have been insubstantial, too. That is what depression does. In my case the desperate search for meaning and pleasure can look like business, like creativity or a “spark” of joy. But the spark is just me bumping against the metallic edge of panic. Wheels spinning, and life is just so much harder than it needs to be. Pinched.
When the doctor asked me if I was depressed, I said I didn’t think so. I said I was overwhelmed, hypomanic. But now I see.
Now I feel like crying. And that is a very good thing.
Last night walking Leonard in the dark, I heard the wheeeEEE of the pterodactyls lapwings. They are back, so it is officially spring. Officially a time to mark new beginnings.
under the streetlight
wet paw prints, footsteps glisten
temporarily
like loved ones gone by morning
after a crossing over
That’s how depression often works for me, too–gradually things flatten, and I feel edgeless and amorphous. I’m glad to read that you’re seeing the leaves again.
Oh man YES!
I remember seeing the leaves when I got my first glasses.
I also remember the day in grade 8 where I did an eye test in front of the entire class. I stood in the aisle, looked at the chart and said, “E.” That was all I could truly be sure of!
Up til then, I had been writing notes madly, trying to capture every f’n thing my teachers said because there was NO WAY I could read whatever they were writing on the board.
#AdventuresOfANomadicKid
❤️🙌🏽🙏🏼