Upon waking up, I was hit by something I’ve not experienced (to this fullness) in quite a while. I was sad: completely, to my core, sad. It arose from a cluster of news reports I’d gone to bed with: a young boy who had been bullied to the point of attempting suicide, continued work by the wealthy to control everything at the expense of the ordinary, the general state of those in poor health. This sadness would be normal in most circumstances. But waking up to it, feeling it hold you down in bed to the point where you can’t get up for more than an hour and a half, that’s depression.

Depression isn’t feeling sad. That emotion accompanies depression. Being depressed is feeling overwhelmed, burdened, trapped, stymied, helpless, frustrated, and unable to change or even influence your circumstances. Whether or not you really are that much behind-the-eightball is irrelevant. Depression is the state of mind that insists that you are that mired in hopelessness and very little within you can pull you out.

Kindly, physical touch is often a solution as can be getting out of your immediate environs to break away from the images that reinforce those underlying feelings. But the long-term solutions depend on the nature of the depression. Diet helps. Uplifting words help. Changing your circumstances, fundamentally, definitely helps. But in the long term, the thing that carries a depressed person up from the depths most often is when someone reaches out, takes their hand, and asks them to just hang out and be friends.

Yours,
Sylvan