I am the most depressed I have ever been, and depression is my oldest, most frequently seen, friend. And I have been depressed this time much longer than ever before. And I don't think I am ever going to get to the end of this bout because my depression is situational, the result of losses I cannot accept.
Paradoxically, I am numb, yes, but I am also in excrutiating pain.
I often think "This is it, I'm a goner" but way in the back of my conscious mind, I whisper to myself "you test your glucose, inject insulin as needed, take your meds and eat healthfully, a part of you is still caring for you, all is not lost' but such thoughts enter, pierce me and, poof!, they re gone, like in Rilke's poem The Panther:
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
My faintly subtle sense that I am still taking care of myself enters, rushes down through my whole being, plunges into the core of me and is gone.~ Rainier Maria Rilke, The Panther
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