Sadness and everything after

Kaya Koyu, or Levissi to the Greeks who inhabited this village. It was abandoned in 1923 when the Anatolian Greeks were evacuated. Taken by me.

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a good few days now, but the words never seem to come. I think too much at the best of times, and I can hardly describe the last few weeks as that. Thoughts that tumble around in my cranium, little snippets of quotes from sources that I never remember. “If you’re not lost, you’re found”. “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans”.

I used to think that one day I would win this silly battle with depression, but I’m not sure if it’s really something you can win. You just learn to cope with it a little better, one day you’ll get off your medication and hopefully learn to love the you that you are. There are alternatives to this outcome, but they are not worth considering.

One of the things I have struggled with most lately is how the chemicals that mush my brainful of cells together seem to think these other outcomes are worth thinking about. These dark thoughts that fill me, engulf me. It feels like a taboo, almost. I told my mother that I’ve been having really black thoughts, and she patted my hand and told me to go to the doctor, like you’d tell a friend who had missed her period to take a test. I told an SL friend, whose inworld name is Bette, and she was fantastic – the right balance of not over-reacting, but not being patronising either. I told writerJames, and he was brilliant too, trying to focus me on the brilliant things that there are in my world – like him! (He’s right!).

But then, in the quiet of the end of the day, when all the people have stopped saying the right things, the only company I have is myself. As Grandma Death said in Donnie Darko – every living thing dies alone.

I would never do anything like that. Never. In a way, that’s why I feel like I can be as honest as I have been here. I am not an angsty teenager crying for help or attention. But these horrific thoughts are a very real part of a very, very common mental illness. Your inner monologue can be very hard to stifle.

Depression isn’t really something you recover from, and it’s not a battle I will ever win. I realise this now. I will relapse, like I am now. Like plucking your eyebrows, like breaking in heels, like dumping someone – it will always be painful, but every time you do it, you manage it a little better.