Abby, there are two kinds of depression. The first kind is just plain ole ordinary depression. The second kind is clinical depression. With the ordinary depression you feel like shit. With clinical depression you have a thousand reasons to feel like shit.
Every reason you can come up with to feel depressed empowers and justifies your depression. This is what makes psychotherapy such a lucrative profession.
Depression is a wonderful, joyous, fantastic thing. Why? Because it triggers you to look at why you look at things the way you do.
Family history, traumatic childhood, chronic illness. These are things that many people go through. I’ve been through them myself. But some people hold on desperately to these things as part of their identity. It is what creates their depression and therefore it is part of their identity. It becomes who they are.
Is that who you truly are?
Do you define yourself by who you might decide to cease to be? Do you hold on to your family history, traumatic childhood, and chronic illness so strongly that you extinguish any possibility of what you might actually become? Is what you might actually become so scary that you give in to the mental depiction of what you are as determined by family history, traumatic childhood, and chronic illness?
I personally have a horrendous family history, I had a very traumatic childhood, and I suffered through a devastating chronic illness. I chose not to make that the hallmark of my personal identity. I chose to let it all go. I chose to release it all. It wasn’t easy but I did it. And by choosing to do that I healed on every level.
My traumatic childhood and family history was something out of a psychopath’s diary. I released it all. My doctor told me I had 6 to 12 months to live and I told him to go fuck himself. Now, almost 7 years later I am healthier than I’ve ever been. I don’t let my past or anything or anyone else describe or determine my future or my NOW.
I am not my past. My identity is not my past. My identity is not a story about my past.
Suicide? Thirty or forty years ago I used to think that suicide was an awesome statement. I thought about it a lot. I actually thought it would be cool. It would be my way of getting even with all the things I was pissed about.
But now? But now, decades later, I realize that ALL DEATH IS SUICIDE. No matter the reason one manifests for one ’s death, it is all suicide. It is a way to avoid life. It is a way to justify our victimhood. It is our exit strategy. It is our way of somehow becoming a hero without experiencing the rewards of that heroism.
The true heroism is in embracing life and releasing all the victimhood. Sadly, that is a heroism we cannot experience the true rewards of, either, except in knowing that we have not left behind a trail of victimhood for others to follow.
We are all given challenges in life. We can make stories out of our challenges and sell them to the highest bidder or we can overcome those challenges to lead us to something with even greater rewards.
We can become that which is greater than all the challenges we have faced.
We can choose and embrace life in a way that reverberates throughout humankind. We can go beyond our story to create a new one. Instead of worrying about who touches us, we can focus on how we can touch others. When we project love outwards then our stories dissipate and new stories are created. It’s a directional thing. Are we living old stories or are we creating new ones?
Abby, I really love your stories but they are all about the past. That’s cool. But I want to know about your present. And I want to know about your openness to the future. I want to know about how you transformed. I want to know how you loved yourself into existence. I want to know how you put everything about your past into the past and became a new you. I want to know how you transcended herd consciousness. I want to know how you realized your divinity.
That is probably way too much to ask but that’s what I want to know.
