What good is a picture of the dark?

When I was in high school, I went on a youth group trip to Rehoboth, New Mexico. There was a student a few years younger than me who took pictures of the most bizarre things. He would take multiple pictures of the same bizarre thing, too. A cactus needle really close up. A person from very, very far away. The sun at noon. Things that no one else would think to take pictures of.

One of those bizarre things was a completely black night sky. If you flipped through the pictures of this sky, you would think that he had taken pictures of the inside of his pocket by mistake because they showed up simply as black rectangles. But here's the real story: there was a lightning storm many miles away that night. We could see it from the dorms we were staying in. Lots of us set up camp to watch it for a little while because it looked so cool. The student, let's call him Craig, wanted to take pictures of the lightning storm. He was convinced that if he pushed the button at exactly the right moment, he would capture a streak of brilliant lightning against the black sky. It didn't matter to him that he all he had so far was a bunch of black pictures, or that he was using a simple point-and-shoot digital camera. Craig wanted a picture of lightning and he was going to try to get one no matter how many people said it was impossible.

Without knowing the story of the black pictures, you would learn absolutely nothing from them. You wouldn't know who took them, where they were taken, what they were of, or what the point was. You would say, "What good is this picture of the dark? And why are there so many?" Craig would be able to tell you exactly why he taken those photos, if you'd only ask.

Depression is a collection of black pictures. There's the obvious connection that depression feels like a black cloud or a walk through darkness with no light to guide you. It goes deeper than that, though. From the outside looking in, it's hard to understand depression when all you have to look at is a series of black pictures. The photos themselves don't tell a story, don't show anything useful, don't explain a damn thing. You need the photographer's story - words on paper, words spoken aloud, words that form a story.

But depression can rarely be explained adequately with words. Believe me, I've tried. It's invisible, so I can't describe what it looks like. I can describe what a person may look like if they are experiencing certain symptoms, but that's not the same thing. That's like saying that wind looks like trees moving back and forth. The pain is intangible - I can't point to where it hurts and I can't explain how it hurts, only that it does. You would have to crawl into my head (or perhaps my heart) to understand what depression is and does. All I'm left with are these photographs of the dark that say, "I have borne witness to this, I have been here, I have lived to tell you about it."

Society has taught us to keep quiet about our pictures of the dark. It has taught us that if you can't take a picture of something, it may as well not even exist. A picture of the dark means nothing and proves nothing.

That's not true though. A picture of the dark proves that there was someone present to witness the dark and capture it, if only for a moment. That dark represents something that cannot be seen, but must be felt or heard or lived. And just because you cannot see it does not mean that it doesn't exist.

Five Years

Hmm. I seem to be doing that thing where you write only 3 times per year. Like, every four months. I'm a bit embarrassed by that, really, because I used to be so good about posting at least once a week. I can't say that I've been more busy. In fact, I probably have more free time now than I did last semester. I can't say that nothing interesting has happened to me in four months, because my life is nothing if not a ball of interesting. And I can't say that I haven't been inspired by anything, because that's not true either. If anything, too much has been happening and I simply don't know how to write about it.

What I want to write about tonight is this: I've surpassed the 5-year mark in having depression. It makes me feel like I should receive one of these:

I have split feelings about this. On one side, I think, why do I still have depression? How have I not kicked this thing yet? Does this mean that my meds aren't working and I should get different ones? Is my counseling not working and I should find a new therapist? Why can't I be done with depression now? 
But then I remember that depression is its own animal. It's not a case of pneumonia that can be cured with a round of antibiotics. (I had pneumonia over Christmas, by the way. Unpleasant.) The fact that I have had depression for 5 whole years is incredible, really, when you consider that depression has a mortality rate of 20%. For those of you bad at math, that means that 1 in 5 people die from depression (by suicide, alcohol poisoning, overdose, etc).  It means my meds and counseling are working. They're working to keep me alive. This is what makes me want a 5-year chip - it's like, hey, I have survived five years of this horrid disease (by the grace of God, quite frankly) and I did not give up or give in. I'm still here. So don't tell me that I need to try something else, or buck up, or be tougher. Would you say any of those things to a cancer patient who still had cancer five years after being diagnosed?

So that's been happening. And with that comes this wonderingment...when someone is successfully treated for depression and says they no longer feel depressed, people will say "you're back to your old self." I wonder, what would that look like for me?  Five years ago, I was 19. Do I want to go back to who I was at 19? Not really. I was barely an adult, for crying out loud. Depression has been happening during my self-identity formation years. So who am I? Who is that old self?

I sometimes wonder who I would be if I hadn't had depression all this time. Would I be a better person? Would I be a worse person? I like to think that depression has taught me a lot of things, like how to better understand and have compassion for other people. I also like to think that is has made me more patient and less judgmental. Would I have developed those qualities in the absence of depression? And, perhaps most importantly, would I have ended up in a masters program learning how to be a counselor? I can't imagine that I would.

Now that it's mid-March, I've thought of a New Year's Resolution. I almost never make resolutions. Chalk it up to laziness. But this year, it seems that mantras are becoming a Thing, so it came to me one day to combine the two. My mantra/resolution is "Rationalize less. Feel more." Basically, I want to not let my thinking and analyzing minimize my emotions. I've done that practically my whole life. It goes kind of like this:

"I feel very sad." ---> Why do you feel sad? ---> "I don't know." ---> That's not a reason. ---> "Seriously, I don't know why I feel so sad." ---> You probably don't have a good reason, so you should just cheer up.

Instead, I want to do away with that kind of thinking. There doesn't have to be a reason for everything. If I can't find a reason for feeling depressed, I a) shouldn't try to create one, and b) shouldn't feel bad about myself. I should focus instead on truly feeling what I'm feeling and not trying to stuff it down somewhere and compartmentalize it. It is what it is.

Do you hear me? It is what it is.