I have a confession to make. I wasn’t very much looking forward to writing this week. You see, I’ve been a bit depressed lately. Not just a bit down, but big time depressed with everything that comes along with such a condition. As I was considerably fed up, bored and uncomfortable with every activity in my life, so I was with writing.
Why, you may ask? That’s a rather good and intelligent question, yet to which I do not know the right answer. Nothing spectacular had happened to trigger my emotions, but still that heavy, dooming feeling had kicked in severely. Sometimes mood swings just come and go as they please.
Everybody deals with feeling down, depressed, negative, or however you’d want to call it, differently. Personally during such periods I just don’t want to see anybody. My social skills and willingness to enjoy myself around other people instantly drop below zero. So last week I just wanted to sit in a corner with the duvet over my head, weeping silently, meanwhile waiting for either my depression or my life to end.
And that’s when the peculiar things started to happen. All of a sudden all kinds of people wanted stuff from me professionally. First of all a potential client replied to a query I’d send earlier and wanted to arrange a date for a chat about a possible collaboration. Then a communication studies student emailed me with the remarkable request for an interview about the life and work situation of a true writing professional. And last but not least some television guy had been given my name by a mutual connection. Whether I’d want to star in a weekly show about art to talk about music for two minutes. How utterly flattering.
All those professional opportunities and that amount of attention in one week! Sometimes weeks go by without any work related social activities. And now, at the same time that I am so desperately depressed, all of a sudden all these people seem to have found me and approach me with all these positive and exciting things.
I was flabbergasted. It was like I had become a magnet. Like I had turned into the negative pole of a magnet and was attracting huge amounts of positive poles. All that positive energy, where did it come from? It also reminded me of air pressure, where the air with the highest pressure automatically flows towards the area with low air pressure, thus creating wind.
I was reluctant at first and wanted to shut these intrusive energy fields out. I didn’t feel like meeting anyone, let alone new people. Why were these people trying to interfere with my current mental state? However, mainly because it were professional opportunities, I eventually decided to allow myself being blown along with that magnetic kind of energy wind.
It resulted in some surprisingly pleasant situations, conversations and experiences. And I must admit, I felt a whole lot better afterwards.
I didn’t understand. It wasn’t logical and it didn’t fit my views of depression. You hear so many times that depressive people can’t seem to find themselves in positive situations. All those stories about people that are constantly unlucky and that are being disappointed by life day by day. They seem to have been deprived from positive energy, whilst I felt like I was attracting it like a magnet.
But it somehow makes sense. It somehow seems to fit the laws of nature that positivity will always come to negativity. I tend to shut down and block everything out when I’m feeling low. Doors and windows shut, desperately keeping out anything from the outside that could possibly make me trip and stumble even more. But last week for the first time I had been effectively lured out of my insurmountable castle of melancholy and gloom. And it was good.
It shines a new light on depression for me. Because I now realise that at some point the positive energy has to come around to fill up that negative, empty void. So maybe the only thing I have to do is make sure I am not so solidly shut down and barricaded that that magnetic energy wind can’t come in.
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Oo wow .. am glad all those things came along to give you a positive kick up the backside! Not sure if this is entirely related .. but anyway .. you’re surprise at becoming an opportunity-magnet at the height of your depression reminded me (I think this will show you how my mind works) of how sometimes people become entranced by people who are indifferent (or largely horrible) to them. You know how some men (supposedly) love a bitch, ‘n all that? So, perhaps the Gods of Fate are a sucker for a (temporarily) bitchy/horrible Cecile and couldnt resist chucking things your way?
(this is all meant in a good way by the way in case it’s come out awful and slightly odd-sounding)
Left by London-Lass on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008