^ Quote from Jeremy Piven's character in The Family Man. Every time I think of it I LOL.
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I've reached a plateau.
And THANK GOD for that.
In almost any other ring of life a plateau might be considered a bad thing only because it is not a good thing. But I...no. I rejoice in this berth of flat land where I can enjoy the stunning vista of "meh" and just catch my breath for a while.
I've always been extraordinarily high-functioning, but for the first time I may actually be truly functional. Maybe admitting that will invite mortal peril, and admitting that that is still a real fear of mine speaks to the miles of vertical climb I still have to go.
It has been over a year since my last major depressive episode, which is over 365 consecutive days of NOT feeling devastatingly shitty. I will attribute that partially to a drastic change in environment and the total upheaval of everything that I once perceived as safe or comfortable.
That was the easy part. The difficult and frustrating part was the hours of therapy I can't afford, the drugs I don't believe in, and the self-help books I couldn't finish because no matter how they started they all seemed to end up at "Well...you just have to CHOOSE to be happy." Which would be a very offensive and frankly stupid thing to say to someone with any kind of perceptible illness. "You just have to CHOOSE to not have lupus." Erm, no though. No one gets to choose which genetic predispositions they may have, or the unfortunate circumstances that occur in life to fan the first spark of hellfire. It's just something that happens.
At some point you have to accept that the world is full of people who don't understand or think they understand because they have experienced some kind of acute sadness. I don't mean to undermine the very real and devastating grief that accompanies a broken heart or the loss of a loved one, but anyone who has been unfortunate enough to experience depression and grief can attest that they are two very distinct feelings. Because one is a powerfully bad feeling and one almost seems to be an equally powerful lack of any kind of feeling at all.
So on that level I have no choice but to believe that depression is some kind of overreactive mental defense mechanism against heightened emotional sensitivity. Your body can't possibly react to all the feels at once, so it packages them up and throws them into the creepy Sarlacc pit of your mind. And if you ask anyone with a depressive disorder what an episode feels like, they will probably describe something similar to peering into a Sarlacc pit and feeling an insurmountable urge to jump.
The eeriest part is that you can feel that there's something deeply beautiful and meaningful hiding out in that void. If I truly believed that I could survive the fall, I may jump in just out of curiosity, to see if my hunch is true and that depression is about something bigger than a dysfunctional coping mechanism or wonky brain chemistry...maybe something bigger than me....maybe something bigger than humans.
Maybe some day I'll have that kind of courage. For now I'd like to hang out on my plateau and enjoy the abundance of beautiful and meaningful things that are already here for me. They are everywhere, they are just a little hard to find if you don't know what you're looking for. It's kind of like finding shapes and figures in clouds.
I once had a vision in a meditation of being born in the ocean. I swam to land, climbed up through the trees, and floated up into the sky until I entered a colorful stratosphere, where I saw a human figure floating listlessly, covered in rock-like skin. I watched as its skin started to break and light poured out through the cracks. Then that figure was me. I clawed off my rock-skin and lifted off my rock helmet so I could see. And I saw.
The world was sad, so I became sad.
But the world was also beautiful, so I became beautiful.
