Depression is the most isolating thing. It seems as though there were an invisible sheet of glass between you and other people. This sheet of glass comes, in fact, between you and the world itself, between you and your own experience. Everything is covered in a kind of fog, everything is wrong, tasteless, dull, not as it should be, an insurmountable task, a deep pointlessness.
One of the most amazing things for my younger daughter, fifteen months, is appearing and disappearing. Being visible and then not. Hiding and reappearing. Curtains are the best for this, but any old surface will do, if it’s possible to get behind or under it. But it is already quite a grown-up game, she has already started to see the world as adults do, split up into separate entities.
Compassion is not something artificial, like telling yourself you are good at something when you’re not, or that you are a ‘good person’ when you don’t feel as if this is true. Compassion naturally flows once the blocks of shame and self criticism are removed.
The “Beguns/Wanderers” are a minor group of the “Old Believers” — Russian Christians who broke off from the Russian Orthodox church in the fifteenth century, believing that the devil had captured the world and that the only way to escape from his power was to keep moving…
It feels different from the September Blues. They were mainly in my head. I knew that a change was coming, and I was trying to keep up with the preparations, get ahead of it, take control of it. This feels more difficult, my body has to actually move through the changes, the cold, the viruses, the fires, the new rhythms and the ever increasing darkness. At the same time it feels less speedy and mind-driven, and more authentic. In fact it is only the other side of the coin…
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