Ennui

I have begun to read a couple of blogs by ministers who live with depression (Beautiful Mind | Real Live Preacher). I recommend them both. The author of Real Live Preacher ceased blogging this year, but he has an extensive archive and I intend on reading his posts in retrospect. Today, this resonated with me:

Depression has made things messy for me, and it has made me much more forgiving and gentle when I meet people who are emotionally out of control.

Some of my closest relationships, have both positively and negatively evidenced the fruit of “messiness.” It seems to have been both a coping mechanism and a set up for emotional devastation. Either way, I appreciate the inherent compassion, produced.

I also connected with the following statement. I found it to be an uncomfortable articulation of my mode of operation:

I proudly labeled myself as a cerebral person. I spent a lot of time thinking and talking and arguing and reasoning. Not so much time feeling things. I thought I was in control of all that silly, emotional stuff. I felt numb, mostly. And I assumed that you weren’t feeling things unless you, well, FELT them.

Oh, you feel things. Here’s a shocker. No one feels things in more dangerous ways than the person who thinks he feels nothing. That’s the guy you have to watch out for.

I can identify one definite node of departure from the aforementioned: I have never thought I was emotionally in control. The “numbness” however, rings true. There are times though, that I yearn to FEEL.

I have developed a list of cathartics, routes to release, that span the gamut from religious experience to physically detrimental decisions. Anything to escape the anguish of being incapable of flipping off the ‘internalized stoic’ switch; anything to express, to connect, to cry, to negate “nothing.” I cycle through my list and end up in moral conundrums with actual consequences.

I need a healthier way to deal.
A healthier way to feel. Teach me how to feel; how to feel and respond.