alternate title: how I plan on dealing with depression
I feel somewhat depressed again today. I wonder that changed. Because, last week was the best full week (emotionally) that I have had in almost a year. I'm trying to think of what changed ... I did start watching more films. But some were inspiring, and some helped me feel even more. Sopping wet crying over a Wes Anderson, yes, but I felt something. I could stop watching films, but part of me suspects that is part of what I need -- to chase feeling. I hate this dullness of depression. Yes, the emotions can be scary. But gray will always be scarier. So even if a couple of sad films, and whatever else, make my depression act up, isn't it worth getting a good cry? I used to love a good healthy cry, because they were just that, healthy. Before I got so caught up in what is healthy and what's not and I forgot to just feel it all. Maybe I need to recognize that, technically, even depression is an emotion that I am attempting to sweep under the rug. Calling it names and saying it's not real enough. It might not be good for me to call all my most present emotions unreal and insist on only recognizing the ones on either side. Depression is not no man's land. If I am to insist on feeling, I must feel the depression itself. And now that I am realizing the hypocrisy I have played into with Depression, I can see the other emotions I have been treating the same way -- love, attraction. I think I am going to take more time to just sit and feel whatever emotion is present right then, instead of trying to change it. And then I am going to paint them, every emotion, in all their ugly middle school photo glory. And I am not going to throw them away.
I think this is what my mother was trying to explain to me last weekend.
I Feel it All // Feist