From the depths

I'm a boat on the ocean/

I'm just a ship lost at sea

--Matthew Good, While We Were Hunting Rabbits

This one will not be easy.

Not to write and, surely, not to read. And for that I'm sorry.

But this is how I can fight today, right now, at this very minute in a feeble effort to push back the darkness that has enveloped me again, just one more day in a countless string of others.

My official diagnosis of depression includes the word "recurrent" while my GP uses the less formal descriptor "breakthrough."

That's what it has done today. 

Days like today it doesn't respect medication, exercise, relaxation techniques, cognitive behaviour or acceptance therapy. 

It doesn't respect the encouraging words of my wife or the hugs and kisses of my daughter.

It is remorseless in every sense of the word.

Sometimes I think I'm kidding myself, all this frenetic running and cycling around, trying to keep the black dogs at bay. 

This morning I lifted weights and then hit the road for a run. But I knew something wasn't right. I ran some errands and visited my parents. And still it wasn't right.

I felt like these activities trying to distract myself was like bailing water from a sinking boat. (One more metaphor for depression in my ever-growing collection). The harder I bailed, the higher up in the water the boat would ride.

Slow the bailing and it would sink up to the gunwales. 

Stop bailing, like I did after dinner, and it started its trip to the bottom, leaving me in the cold, black water.

It's when I'm in the water like this I have to force myself to see the big picture, to see the positive side of things. Instead of telling myself it's hopeless because of how I feel right now, I have to tell myself it's not hopeless because of how good I've felt on more days than not over the last several months.

Because that's one thing depression is deadly good at -- acting as a distorted lens and colouring everything -- literally everything -- in your life as negative. Think of the worst you've ever felt -- those days when you're filled to the brim with pessimism -- and multiply that by a thousand. Then imagine living that way for hours, days, months, years on end.

It will wear down even the strongest of us, just as water will wear down granite given enough time.

I know that as difficult as today has been, I can take solace in being able to write even these few words. 

I will continue to bail.

And hopefully soon -- if not tomorrow -- I'll unfurl a sail or two.