Enough Silence

I'm not really any better, but I had better learn to deal with it, because it's going to take a while to get my medication right and for therapy to "sink in".
It's been a bit of a dilemma over what to do with my blog over this time, becasue I was so determined to keep my depression out of it.. But it is something that happens periodically; I was free of it for several years, but the black dog has returned. It's part of my experience and as such, appears in my art...
I'll post a few pics of what I've done recently - as soon as I can take some decent ones. I didn't realise how difficult it is to photograph mostly black or very dark pieces. I'll keep trying.

Meanwhile...back in my head:
Apart from fibre art, I also love the art of words, of being able to put them together so they express exactly what you want to express. The next bit is dark and sad and.. well, yes... depressing, so feel free to skip it, if you want. I've tried to express how the last couple of months have been...

Melancholia

Depression, or as I prefer to call it, Melancholia, since the name 'Depression' is wholly inadequate to explain the dark despair, is an exceedingly ugly state of affairs.

It is a desolate, barren landscape, unbroken by any features or living things, save for stones that keep getting lodged in your shoes. Time becomes an endless stretch of bland emptiness crawling by, torturously slowly, provoking persecutory taunts of uselessness, time-wasting and oxygen theft. Judgment is twisted, perception distorted, every overheard comment at best a slight, more often an accusation, always finding something wanting in you.

Getting out of bed, getting dressed, making food, any movement at all, is an exercise in swimming through syrup, hardly worth the effort. Emotions swing from a numb detachment of complete indifference and meaninglessness, punctuated by falls into valleys of varying depth of cruel and torturous despair. Despair, all-consuming and overwhelming, that demands relief by whichever means possible, whether by copious tears, dependent clinging to any possible hope, sedatives or oblivion by one's own hand.

Sleep is a blissful escape, but frequently withheld as if some form of punishment for unstated crimes. When occasionally granted, it is often restless and filled with exhausting, incomprehensible dreams. Decisions are unsurmountable, thinking is slowed to that of a frame-by-frame action replay. Memory is a sieve with large holes; everything that must be accomplished must be written down, listed, or it is gone forever.

Concentration lapses mid-conversation, when the pervasive inertia takes over and staring blankly into space, as if in trance, comes naturally. Falling comes naturally, too, the feeling of involuntary free-fall into a pit of darkness, footfalls of hope whizzing by, out of reach.

Fatigue, physical, mental, emotional, accompanies every action, as the futility of all effort becomes clearer and clearer, the meaninglessness of existence more obvious, hope more elusive and obliteration more and more compelling, if only to escape the searing pain of the despair...