THE OTHER HALF OF MY HEART

Sometimes you're lucky enough to have one person you love without question. Without reason. They have just always been a part of your life, a part of you. Their existence is so integral to who you are, just as they are, that it becomes easy to overlook what lies beneath the façade of friendship –the depth of a love that is truly understanding and unconditional, because without one another each of you would be only half of a whole. And a half-life is surely no life at all.

But you go on, loving your other half, without appreciating how vital they are to the very breath in your lungs, the continued beating of your heart, your ability to move from one day to the next. Until one day it hits you, like planets colliding. The fallout is devastating, and terrifyingly spectacular.

Devastating because you can’t go back, can’t overlook the truth of your love anymore. Blissful ignorance can never be yours again.

Terrifyingly spectacular because you don’t want the blissful ignorance any more than you can have it, but what if the other half of you doesn’t see it? What if they never will?

You daydream, hold on to the hope that someday your other half wakes from their stupor and collides with you. Until then you must go on, pretend that you, too, are still living in the darkness of blissful ignorance.

The Fruitful side of depression.

There is a fruitful side to depression.

Amid the fog of despair, the crippling numbness and soullessness, the dark vortex of depression feels constant, endless. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, because there is no tunnel, only a perpetual riptide dragging you ever further from shore. You clamber to stay afloat in an ocean of dejection. No longer can you see the land, the solid ground of happiness, ambition, future. The sharks are circling, licking their lips at the life you bleed into the water, and you are tempted to let them take you.

Before you give up, before you stop struggling to keep your face above the surface, and sink into the abyss, bleeding and broken and letting the sharks devour your forsaken carcass, look up. The lifeboat is there. You may not see it at first, but keep kicking, keep your head up until you do. It will come. Don’t seek it out, don’t waste the precious little energy you need to keep afloat searching for the lifeboat. Just stay afloat, stay put and keep your eyes open, it will come to you.

When at last the lifeboat arrives, it appears not as a lifeboat, but soon you recognise it. You feel the tug as it slowly drags you back to shore. Do not toil to hold on, or you risk expending the little energy you have left and letting go before you get to shore. Simply let it take you, keep hold with a gentle grip and let it take you. And enjoy the view as you are towed back to the coastline of a contented future.

This may all sound a little too metaphorical for your liking. And if you suffer from depression, believe me, I know you’re probably reading this and thinking, it’s all well and good to say this crap, but this doesn’t do a thing to help me! I ask you to reread the last sentence… “And enjoy the view as you are towed back to the coastline of a contented future.” 

I’ve been there, I’ve been out in that ocean, and I couldn’t see a way back. I couldn’t see how the numbness, the emptiness of my soul, could ever thaw. But it did.

For me the lifeboat was a combination of moving closer to the support network of family and old friends, a little bit of yoga, and the acceptance of a death I had spent years trying to overlook.

When you find your lifeboat –and you will– the thaw will be slow. It will take time to heal from the amount of bleeding your soul has done. The reason I want you to read the last sentence over and over, many times if you need to, is because that’s where you will find the profit behind your years of suffering. Enjoy the view. Enjoy the view of the world around you, and you will find new wonder in the simple things. Enjoy the view of the people around you, and you will see you are not alone in your struggle. But most of all, enjoy the view of yourself. The blood in the water is you, parts of you that have been exposed. After years of pain and anguish, you can see inside yourself. Examine these parts of yourself, analyze them, decide which parts you want to let go and which parts you want collect on your way back to shore, and put them back in place. And they will be even better than before. You will be better than before.

This is the fruitful side of depression.

You will come back to shore knowing yourself in a way someone who has not been there can never do. So hold on, your lifeboat is coming. Hold on, and you will come back to shore and you will love yourself. This is your reward

As long as you don’t forget to enjoy the view.

ONE NIGHT

Do you recognise the best time of your life while it's upon you, or only as you look back from an arbitrary future? 

Everyone has one moment they look back on, the one moment we wish we could relive over and over. A fleeting whisper in which everything else melted away and, for that brief flash, all the hidden corners of our heart and soul were shared with one person. A secret realm witnessed only by the two, which the rest of the world would never be privy to. Like an island of the purest perfection in an ocean of chaos, we close our eyes and revisit that moment, feel the nirvana again for an instant. But alas, we must open our eyes, and it’s gone. If we could go back, if we could live in that moment forever, we would happily stay, frozen in time, drinking in the serenity until our last breath. 

Sixteen years ago I had such a moment. One night that has lived in infamy beneath the surface of my consciousness all these years. An exquisite moment in time which rises above the turbulent waves of my existence at the mere mention of his name. I dare not speak of it for fear of corrupting the memory. I dare not let it out for fear that its release into the world would taint its beauty. While it stays locked in my heart it remains mine, remains shaped to fit the space inside me where it burrowed sixteen years ago. It can’t be poisoned by disordered thoughts, or broken by tumultuous emotions. It remains a warm place I visit when the world is icy, a small beacon to light my soul when all is dark. 

So I close my eyes. I relive my moment. I feel the warmth, see the beacon, and experience nirvana. And when I open them the world is that much colder, that much darker, for having recognised the best time of my life… too late.