depression – Mixy's Art Blog

It’s been all this time since I posted. Cos I’ve been away.
But I’ve kept the book of weekly pages running, and so here we are with the page from the week before last.

Somewhere nice? Nah, it wasn’t that sort of away.

I didn’t leave the place, I just left the usual. I left the ordinary responsibilities of being me.
Time away to recombobulate.

I’ve been hiding out here in a sanctuary of colors.
Lost in time and lost in patterns.

And between you and me, I still haven’t gone back.
And between you and me, I’m not sure if I will.

Thing is, I’m just realising now as I explain my days to you, I’m making sense of it as I go along.
The reason I find so much warm comfort in these simple scribbles, blocks and lumps of colour…

As a kid I loved – more than almost anything – the simple pleasure of colouring in. It was as a meditative process then as it is now.

The only time I’ve had an out of body experience was sitting cross legged on my bed, aged about 9 or so, colouring in. I remember it like it was yesterday. My train of thoughts had wandered away from me and as I tried to back-track a mantra began to form in my head “what was it I was just thinking about – what was it I was just thinking about – what was it….’ then WHOOOSH I was somewhere up above looking down at this little girl sitting cross legged on my bed, colouring in.

In the moment I recognised that as me and had time to think Wow! and then How do I get back down? I was back.

I wanted to do it again. And I didn’t. But I did. Not for the first time I was utterly freaked.

So the part of my consciousness that heard How do I get back down? and set me back in my body, prevented me from trying (properly) again.

I carried on colouring.

So I’ve rediscovered this simple joy again as I’ve found myself still wanting to escape the real world in the way I did then as a little girl. I think the magic of getting lost in these colours is amplified by the knowledge that if I wanted to I could probably re-conjure that state again.

I’m soothed by the process, but I’m not looking to disappear now. I spent way to much life in escapism, I inherited traits and tricks that I see now didn’t serve me so well. I’m unpicking that past one bit at a time. Facing up to some ghosts.

Circumstances have set themselves out in front of me in a way I can’t ignore any more. This time I’m stepping up instead.

I was reminded of this article recently

Food for thought. Illness is illness, wherever it’s located, it’s all real. ‘All in the mind’ is a real place!

The writer, broadcaster, actor, avid twitterer (to name but a handful of labels), Stephen Fry, has spoken at length on this subject. Living with bipolar he does so with the hope of enlightening and openly addressing something that is still treated as shameful, embarrassing, or a weakness.

Ask someone with depression ‘what caused it?’ and you ostracize them, you’re suggesting blame – a thing or an event which can (could, should) be reduced, eliminated, forgotten, overlooked, gotten over. And it must be valid, it must have the appropriate magnitude. Maybe a bereavement or a diagnosis, a catastrophe that outweighs someone else’s definition of manageable.

Chances are there wasn’t a single event that triggered the episode, maybe it was a long grinding line of things added up to a tipping point. Or maybe it came from nowhere and side-swiped them.

Be kind, don’t judge, you don’t know their story.