Depression-colored glasses

Posted on April 11, 2009 in Depression Reflections Writing Exercises

I barely notice that the colors have dimmed. Perhaps my eyes have half-shut –making things gloomy through my eyebrows. The diners at their tables, the delivery men in their trucks diminish through a sepulchral wrap I shuffle without noticing whether people dash, strut, or tiptoe. They become lost in the murky light of my melancholy. I cannot tell the color of their coats or pants. Their dresses lack design. Their jewelry disappears.

Voices whisper or shout entirely too loudly. The jerks who frequent public places calling out their business for everyone to hear seem to find the table next to me. I sigh at their company, rub my hands together and, being in a fatalist mood I do nothing except finish my dim-tasting hamburger and leave without complaint to management. Or else I grumble, declare myself at odds with the world filled with idiots.

The idiot takes a different form when I am depressed. In my hyper-condition, he stupidly attacks my clearly superior motives and dreams. In depression, he finds me out, discovers my ignorance, and embarrasses me. I swallow my words, let my socks fall, and swim off like a manatee into my personal Slough of Despond. There’s no proving that I can solve a quadratic equation, translate a Latin participle, or hold out in a political argument. I chew on the hot air which suddenly fills my mouth. There’s no corner obscure enough for me, so I leave the room; letting others to joke about my morose presence. The idiot wins the day. There’s no bending him over the table edge, no blunting his wit with a manic dissection of his cluelessness. The pain comes from feeling that the idiot has managed to perpetrate an untruth or, worse, raised the doubt that it is I who knows nothing. I find a lonely, silent, unquiet place to release tears if they will come.

This was written as an exercise in a writing support group.