Echoes.
There it is. Again.
That feeling of a blackness inside. It’s an echo.
An echo of depression.
Things have been good. Despite the worry of my wife’s chronic illness, its been okay, the chemo is finished….back to “normal” maintenance level medication. Done loads of DIY jobs, which I like. Started a few personal projects, some writing, the video talks been planning to do for a while. And yet…
The blackness inside. It is there, bigger and pulsing more.
“Hello darkness my old friend…”
A week on and the echoes receding. The questions seeking a trigger are redundant but still going around. Why did my mood drop? I mean significantly drop – not a “under the weather” , but free-fall nose dive.
Signs of the echo are around. Things are slower, take more time. Concentration comes and go, easy distractions call like the sweetest thing there ever was is just there, yet out of reach. Irritable. Frustrated. Preoccupied. Numbed.
Daily life carries on. The trigger questions hang around, like a toothache. There doesn’t have to be a reason yet you keep probing the sadness. Why ?
These periods come and they go. They are like the echo of the main depression periods. The echo has a haunting edge to it, that it will grow and turn into something bigger, something worse. It doesn’t. Not this time.
And yet…there is kindness around. Kind messages to a random tweet, yet again the community responds. Interdependency is added to the words I carry as part of a compassionate motto.
And within. My compassionate self recognises the echo, it knows what to do. It’s hard to stick to what I know helps though. Old habits and old inner dialogues start up again. They play out like old black and white films. I know how many of them are illusions now. My compassionate self knows that time is needed.
And so I write this, as the blackness shrinks, the numbness fades and the colour returns to the world. The echo is fading away. It will return from time to time and from time to time I will see it through.
It’s just what happens.