Just Something I Wrote

I have several friends on Facebook and IRL that struggle with depression. For those friends that I am not as close with personally, I, like many of us, tend to make assumptions about other people's lives. 

 

A friend posted the image below today on Facebook. Funny thing. She seems to have it all to me. She is married to the love of her life. Plays music professionally. Travels. Seems happy....... but that's not what depression is. And I know better. It's not dependent upon external circumstances, although that certainly can enhance or dispel it. It's this shadow that follows you. Some days it is very small and you don't mind that it exists. Because you know that it is part of you. You know that you have to live with it. Some days it is large - engulfing you with waves of pain that take every breath that you have and you worry (quite seriously) whether you will live through it.

 

The irony of depression is that many of us that suffer with this have an almost inability to suppress the Self. For society often asks us to suppress our Selves..... why can't you be happy? Why can't you be positive? Why do you have to say that - say this instead. Wear your hair like this. Wear these clothes. Appear this way in public. And the ways that people wish you compromise your Self are endless.

 

Yet we continue to fight to BE who we ARE. We continue to express ourselves. Say the "wrong" things. Do the "embarrassing" things. Stand out. Shout out loud. And inevitably are told to be quiet. If you are a songwriter, you write a song with a cuss word in it (oh the horror!). Or write a song about a girl that ODs and sells herself on the street for money. Or you get onstage and tell someone that they can wait til next week for the crappy band to play the over-requested song they want to hear. You fight back because your inner soul refuses to be silenced. For the soul knows that silence in itself is death. Maybe worse. But through that fight you continue to go against the grain and be outside the "norm". Your existence becomes a challenge to everything around you. Your friction becomes stronger. Your struggle becomes even harder.

 

All of my life, I tried desperately to "fit in". It is the heart of the inspiration for a song I wrote called "Outside the Outsiders". I always wanted to be like everyone else. Not understanding that none of us are alike. And some of us are very far outside of a "norm" - unique to the point of "weird" or "strange" or "different". People that cannot accept me is still a source of constant frustration. Even though I know that they are shallow.  I know that they cannot see beyond the very small piece of real estate that they live on. They refuse to see an entire world and centuries of history and constant evolution. They see colors. They see beauty in superficiality framed in a current context. They judge. With a scale that is impossible to balance.

 

So I say to this friend whom I hardly know - Embrace your unique-ness. Embrace your bad-ness. Embrace your sad-ness. Embrace your negativity. Embrace your positive side. Be you. Be weird. Be different. But be YOU. The depression comes and goes. Yes, take care of that. Do not allow it to engulf and drown you. Because we need you. As long as you can stay with us on this planet, we need you. We don't need more people that water down their existence and silence their inner Selves to "fit in". We need YOU. That beautiful, unique, ugly, interesting, boring, amazing, horrible, incredible YOU.

 

Steps

Seems like I have been wandering for awhile. I remember being a young child listening to the story of the children of Israel wandering in the desert for 40 years. My developing brain envisioned these people just walking around in circles all day and night following the cloud and the fire and dodging falling food at mealtimes.

We worry about where we have been. We worry about the past - regrets, roads we should have taken, and roads we shouldn't have. We worry about the future - about security, about happiness, about longevity. And I think today about steps. The steps that brought me here and the steps I take today and the steps I may take tomorrow. But all I can really see is this step. The past is gone. I can't step back and choose a different route. The future is too far away. I can't see where it leads. I can't see whether I'm on the "right" or "wrong" road.

And maybe that is all that life is about? Just a step. And then one day you look behind you and you see where you have traveled. You see where you fell down. You see where you ran. You see where you danced. You see where you stopped to rest. And it was a journey. Your own. No one else's. Even if someone walks with you. They are never taking your steps. 

The day after I landed in Beijing, China, I climbed The Great Wall. It was amazing. Surreal. I was surprised by the structure. The steps were uneven -  some tall, some short. Not from weather erosion or human traffic erosion, but from the building itself. It's difficult to climb steps when you cannot anticipate the height of each one. You are like a blind man trying to walk. You can try to sense. But you have to pay attention. Be careful. Be aware.

We are all blind to our path. Maybe sometimes we don't pay attention. We let our guard down and quit being careful. We lose our purpose and become blissfully unaware.

I wanted to make it a certain distance along the wall. It was challenging physically. I was tired from the long flight and the time change. But if I just focused on that one step at a time. If I didn't look too far in the distance, I wasn't as impatient.

I'm notorious for over-analyzing the past and worrying over the future. But all I can really change is this one minute of my existence.

Self-acceptance is huge for me. Huge. I am working back to a point of authenticity. I've been distracted for so long. And so-called "friends" don't help. Stones whirl all around us. Judgmentalism is Hypocrisy's favorite whore. But I know this. I know better. I look inside. I look in the mirror of true friends that truly care and realize that I am who I think I am. I just need to focus on that. Ignore the rest.

So today I just focus on this step. This one step. Lifting one foot. Setting it down. Here. Wherever here is. And turn around every once in awhile and smile about where I have been. And then another turn brings another smile for all of the places I have yet to be. But really. I am just here.