A Metaphor for My
Depression
I am an extremely lucky person, and just as unlucky in other
ways.
The lucky part is that I have a support system and a bunch
of people who care for me in ways I don’t always understand. Which is good, because I am fighting
depression (the unlucky part) in a way that is at once difficult to articulate
and yet fairly easy to describe in the context of a simple fire in my fireplace.
In the long, cold, and dark nights of winter, I like to
build a fire for warmth and sometimes just to watch and to hear and to
smell. It has a gas starter, so getting
a good fire going quickly is easy and keeping it going, even if the wood is
damp, is a simple task.
After my family went to bed tonight, I turned out all the
lights and contemplated the fire that I had started earlier. My goal when starting one of these fires is
to start with smaller pieces of wood to get a good bed of coals going, then
move to larger pieces of wood and shut off the gas starter to allow the coals
to perpetuate the conflagration. When I
did that tonight as I became the last one here in the family room, I placed a
relatively flat wedge of wood on top of the coals and a “starter” piece of
lumber of a smaller size.
As I just sat and watched the fire, I was struck by how it
moves and what a living thing an active fire can be.
At first, that flat wedge of lumber burned alone the bottom
and flared somewhat around the ends. I
imagined that the coals were the various and sundry events that have occurred
over the last several years that I have tended to “stuff” and not deal with –
with the wedge of wood acting as something of a lid on the coals.
As you would expect, as the fire burned the wedge of wood
diminished in size and more fire started to lick up from under the bottom of
it. It was not a continuous thing – it
would come and go in repeating patterns.
Much like my own grief and depression has expressed itself in the last
several months, and probably years.
Also during this period, there was the occasional pop and
snap of the wood, as the fire would find a pocket of sap and heat it to the
point of explosive release. Those varied
in size from relatively small to quite large pops that sprayed showers of
sparks within the confines of the fireplace.
I took those to be “epiphany” moments when I had glimmers of insight
into the underlying issues at hand in my grief and depression. Not solutions per se, just insights into part
of what was going on.
Then, the pile of burning wood shifted. The flames renewed and intensified. This brought to mind my hospitalization in
October and the breakdown of sorts that occurred then. No longer could those simmering embers be
left to just be – they broke out much like my grief hit a breaking point in the
days after the second anniversary of my Dad’s death. No seeming trigger – just enough was enough
and the emotion erupted out of my subconscious much like the flames intensified
when the unburned wood was exposed when the pile shifted.
Some considerable amount of time has passed since this
course of events has occurred. As I
watch the fire now, it continues to burn itself out and continues to settle
from time to time. With these more
recent settling events, no new flame-ups occur.
The bed of embers is slowly diminishing, though they continue to be
intense at the core. Of course, in time
and without the additional of a new log, they will burn themselves out.
Which brings to mind this question – where am I now and how
do I make sure that I stay on the path of the dying embers and don’t add new
fuel to this fire? One of the fuels is
alcohol. I continue to struggle to get
those thoughts under control, but it’s quite difficult at certain times not to
fall back to those old thought patterns and want to act on them. But I cannot do that and must continue to
strengthen the resolve there.
The other stressor that will be hitting this week is
work. I will be back to work for the
first time in over 3 weeks, and I don’t know what to expect. A big part of me hopes the travel ban has been
lifted and I can hit the road again.
While the structure and schedule of being home the last 3+ months has
been good for me to try to regain perspective in the big picture, I am crawling
out of my own skin with the “wanderlust” feelings that are woven into my
DNA.
But there is also little doubt that the demands of my
position – travel and otherwise – continue to contribute to my confusion and
depression, though in different ways from the grief perspective. It’s still very confusing and I am hoping and
praying for clarity on this issue.
