We Within

Lately, I've had many conversations with people about what depression is like. Those who haven't gone through it find it very difficult to understand how it actually feels, and they struggle to figure out how to help a loved one who's suffering from it. Let me say it outright: It's very difficult to help someone with depression. So if you're giving yourself a hard time because you don't know how to support someone, give yourself some love instead. It takes time. The best way I've found to describe what depression feels like is through a metaphor: It's like eating something and not being able to taste it (sometimes literally), or like looking at a colourful image and not being able to see the colours. You know the flavours and colours are there... but you just can't taste or see them.  But today I was looking through my files and I found a text I wrote years ago when I was starting to come out of a depression. So I thought of sharing it to help people

A year ago I started feeling something was off in my life but I didn’t know what change I needed to make. Then I read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and I realised two things: 1. I need to express myself creatively. When I don’t, I enter a spiral of existentialist depression. 2. My creativity was completely depleted. I know I’m not the only one. We all are creative beings , and by that I mean we feel a need to express ourselves in one way or another, to try new things, explore, experiment and play. For some of us, this need is particularly strong. We did it when we were children, but as we grow up life starts demanding things from us and before we realise it, there’s no time and energy left for our creative endeavours. And then we feel empty. That book opened my eyes and reconnected me with a longing I didn’t know I felt. I took photos sometimes and wrote occasionally but I didn’t feel the passion I used to feel in the past. I wasn’t feeling much of anything. So, how was I supposed