The Well
I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of analogies that help capture depression: the black dog, the glass box, drowning, etc. All of these perfectly encompass the principle of depression and communicate its harsh reality.
Depression, to me, felt like sitting at the bottom of a well, with a thick and dark sludge surrounding me. It made me unmotivated in all areas of my life. Talking was an effort. Smiling was an effort. Waking up was an effort. I always felt mentally exhausted. It required maximum effort to achieve anything. Whatever I managed to achieve used up so much energy that it didn’t feel worth doing. It felt far better to just sit in that swarming sludge alone, and in the depths of darkness.
The curious thing about depression is, although it is a place of constant suffering, it has a strange feeling of comfort. It almost feels ‘inviting’. It becomes all you know. It traps you.
It’s hard to remember what life had been like before it, and it is next to impossible to envision your future without it. Deciding to leave that place was daunting. I wasn’t even sure who I would be without it.
Rock bottom is a hard place to live in, but the positive of being at such an unforgiving depth is that there is only one way to go from there: Up.
The Breaking Point
I still remember vividly the night I reached my breaking point. That moment solidified one truth; I could no longer live the way I had been living. It was time for a change.
I had just gotten back from a night out. I sat on my driveway, crying uncontrollably. I remember continually whispering, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’
The outer world felt quiet and at peace. I, on the other hand, felt my inner world crumbling. There was only one solution I could think of in that utterly helpless moment, which terrified me. I knew I had to distract myself if I did not want to yield to those dark thoughts and make a decision that would permanently cause great harm. I called a friend, and went to bed. The next morning, I had to make the most significant decision of my life to date; continue down the long and gruelling road of suffering, or seek the light and find a way out.
I chose to do the latter, and so my journey began.
The Awakening
I wish I could say the growth I have achieved through tireless work hit me all at once, but it didn’t. Coming out of depression was not easy. It was a slow and tiring process. Just as my depression didn’t hit me all at once, my awakening was no different.
The first instances of my ‘awakening’ were the emotions that came back to me. After years of feeling numb, my emotions returned with a fierce intensity, like powerful waves crashing onto the shores of my mind. I felt human again. I would go from feeling sad to feeling angry. The positive emotions came back too, but I could not recognise them; they had a sense of newness to them. They almost felt alien to me, and I didn’t know what to do with them.
For months, I rode this chaotic rollercoaster and questioned if the comfort of numbness would be easier to live with. However, through persistence, I started to appreciate the positive feelings, and to my surprise, they presented themselves in the simplest of activities.
I live in a beautiful home in Sydney that overlooks the bush. One day, I was reading on the driveway, just as I had done hundreds of times before. I suddenly noticed the warmth of the sun on my skin. I became aware of the sounds of distant birds as their songs were carried across the bush. I saw the trees gently swaying back and forth in front of me by the soft caress of the winds. And then I felt it.
As the sun soaked into my skin, I was enveloped in a warm embrace, and this incredible energy coursed through my body. I felt like I was experiencing the magnitude of the sun for the very first time. I remember an uncontrollable smile across my face! Not by instruction, not by force, but by pure instinct.
The wind felt uplifting; it felt like the gusts of wind were clearing out the minor problems that I had so tightly clutched onto. The sounds of nature and silence played as a beautiful orchestra in my ears, and as the soundtrack to my ‘light’. I wondered how these simple things could have such a positive effect on my wellbeing. The energy roared so powerfully within me that I literally could not sit still. I wanted to scream, not in anger at the world, but in pure delight.
It was my first taste of the ‘light’, which gave me the hope needed for the future. This became the fuel I needed to keep the fire in my belly going.
I was slowly becoming more and more hopeful.
Up From The Well 