July light fades a pink kiss goodbye. The worn one knows well not to believe the false promises softened in its pastel glow. Sirens of lies singing us onto the rocks of the forever young. Stay here forever and there will be no pain or woe. Life as it is with light moves on indifferent to any one plight or pleasure. For the Universal Powers have big work to do and none of it includes waiting on you.
We stand afield planted, seeded and watered to grow only to wear and wither in but an eye blink of Big Time. In our winking we open ourselves to the beauty of worlds both big and small. People, places, and things to make us whole and worth it. This warmth buzzes about in orbit to pollinate our lives with richness and love.
Then comes the crisis. The light fades stealing with it the freedom and innocence. It moves on unburdened as the oily peddler selling death in a bottle. Rooted the worn one wanes alone, naked and afraid.
Tectonic forces do their work. Ploughing their inescapable hell slowly and without discrimination. They grind—hard. Such is their subtlety as to be motionless to the eye though with a power as immutable as gravity. It goes to work on you at all times. The all seeing eye. Without cease or respite it weighs heavy its jagged white-hot indiscriminate hand, wearing body and mind down to dust. It pulverizes all identity and form until it spits you out as something unrecognizable, something—else. Were you crushed and cast out or transformed and made whole in the friction?
In My Own Time — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
Improved is my mood. It pleases me to write this. A combination of self imposed interventions coupled with some good old fashion luck reinforced the levies to keep the deluge of depression at bay. First to thank my friends and family—my people—for hanging in there and supporting me. The treasured and unbreakable bonds forged in love and tempered in the flames of hardship keep me strong. Iron does sharpen iron, and lost I would be without them. I love you.
Reestablishing mindfulness and meditation practices, daily and with intent, served to ground me. Tethering me back to my breath—the single most fundamental essence of life. This is creating a setting of ease and space to cope. I use an app called Headspace to guide this practice, and I recommend trying out anything to help guide you and keep you on track. There’s no right or wrong way to mediate. No beginning or end to meditation. There is only what you take with you. There is only practice.
Disabling my social media accounts for about three weeks proved an enormous boon. While I am back on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, it is only the latter that has its app on my iPhone. Were I able to share photos from my laptop, I’d have no app at all. I strongly recommend a break to anyone considering it. It’s refreshing and wholesome to lose the anxious connection to the impersonal toxicity of the online world. Now that I am back, I have better boundaries, and going sans app reinforces said boundaries.
Audiobooks came to the rescue, too. Starting in an unexpected way. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! followed up with What Do You Care What Other People Think? surprised me in their countless life lessons weaved into the narrative subtext. This theme of course being ancillary in their intention to let the world into the mind of one of the 20th century’s most gifted physicists. Richard Feynman was far more than a Noble laureate, though. In fact, there was little typical about him. With intention cultivated himself as a curious, skeptical, and inquisitive observer of life parsed through a scientific lens with no space in his brain for fakers. This proved refreshing. I piggybacked this with Jay Shetty’s Think Like A Monk. An instructive tool for bringing purpose, calm, balance, ease, stillness, and peace into our lives. I don’t typically go in for self help books, but this was a joyous journey, and one which offers numerous tangible strategies to help you find your way.
Therapy remains the key piece constant through all this. A safe place to connect with a professional who brings objectivity and experience to your situation. It provides a place to reflect, open up, share, and discover. As self-awareness grows, strategies take shape to help recognize triggers, execute mitigation tactics against them, thereby minimizing the frequency, intensity, and duration of future episodes. If you have been considering therapy but feel shame or weakness, I do encourage you to take the step. You have the strength. Reaching out for help is hard, but it is always a huge leap worth taking. Complicated and difficult is our world. Our hearts and minds more so. Connecting with people to better understand ourselves, our purpose, and our meaning in this life is a great place to start and essential to wellness.
Thanks for reading, and thank you for your support in this.
Autumn We Dance Again — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
When I was a child I welcomed you. You were the harbinger of winter, my favorite season. The calendars in class marked the days with apples in September, pumpkins in October, and leaves in November. Football and cool weather held sway, while holiday specials with the Peanuts gang enchanted our evening. The days grew short and life stayed simple. It was easy.
In adolescence I accepted you with the grudging disaffected disinterest of an awkward teen. Everything was weird and new but you were somehow familiar. We tolerated each other, and I still had the coming onset of snow to long for.
As an adult I bent to your will. Each year you found news ways to deliver familiar tones of sadness. Loss and loneliness proved your calling card, and you seemed to take joy in my pain. Your growing cold and dimming light worked to push me further toward world weariness. Anxieties grew in the dark. Sadness festered in the cold corners of my mind. Emptiness filled my world, and you were always there mocking with a smug impartiality to it all. A season loved by so many kept me stunted and shirked aside. I had not invite to the party. Years turned to decades and I never fit in.
I have struggled with you for years. So much so it is of no worth to name you fall since the word is far too dire. I know search to flip the script. I Seek to write a new narrative. One of acceptance. One of purposeful restoration. I must learn to slow down and breathe. To be more accepting of your grace. Please take my hand and teach me how to dance, sweet Autumn, I don’t want to hurt anymore.
A New Year awaited as past lives spiraled inexorably down the drain. As unmovable as gravity, depression moves for no man, nor stops with force of will alone. Not even a calendar’s turn holds sway. It was 2012, and I was in trouble.
January 1, 2012, happenstance found me on a crisp sunny afternoon wandering listlessly about the beaches of Holgate—along the narrow shores of Long Beach Island’s southernmost tip. With me was a camera, an old DSLR I purchased from a friend’s brother in 2008, a device I had no business using. The camera had lain dormant for years, finding predictable disuse under the disregarded ownership of a man who bounced from one hobby to the next, dropping each like a bad habit. I was that man, and yet the camera was somehow with me.
Lost, I drifted the shore break. With winter sun on my face tottered along shifting from fits of inconsolable sadness to long periods without emotion. Occasionally pressing the shutter. As far as photographs went I had no clue what I was doing; no concept of aperture, shutter speed, focal length, or exposure. Sure, from my painting and drawing days I had a sense of composition, but any and all training stopped there. Making photographs was foreign to me. So, too, was happiness.
Spinning in this dance of pain and silence I brooded over the past. Afraid for the future I dwelled on what was, what might have been, and what certainly never would be. Entering my 30th year I was no stranger to dark turns. I had already experienced three long bouts of depression over the years but my latest malevolent spell was different. This felt even less controlled, less certain, and far more insidious.
Depression is less. It is less of everything. Less joy. Less worth. Less excitement. Less hope. Passions that once burned hot turned to ashes in my mouth leaving behind a charred taste of disgust—if only I could still taste as I once had.
Yet for some reason I kept pressing that damn shutter. Click. Click. Click. Eventually I ambled upon a clamshell. It was a large sort plucked up in the sand, buried barely enough to support its weight upright. This looks, uh, interesting, I thought. Ignorant to golden hour at that point, it was the rich yellow light casting the “interesting” glow upon the shell. Belly down and elbows up on the sand I pressed the autofocus and clicked. Click. Click. Click.
Backing my index finger off the shutter I continued to lay, splayed out face down in the sand. Should I stay here? Maybe I’ll just cry here? What am I even doing here? To hell with this life I’m drawn through like a prisoner in chains. But what are my crimes? Is a malfunctioning brain all it takes to condemn a man? Covered in sand and self-loathing I rolled and I sat. It’s time for these manacles to drag me home.
Depression is less but it is also more. More loathing. More pain. More sadness. More discomfort. It’s a paradox impervious to logic. The firm ground of reason is but loose sand eroded by a surging tide of emotion. How long will the waters rage? Will the seas subside or has the sea itself risen to this new, turbulent normal? Will I even get my head back above water to know?
Hours later happenstance struck again. A friend reached out to let me know she and a few friends were planning a 365 photo project throughout 2012. She explained the rules—each day participants would upload a photograph to Google+ and tag it. We’d go around +1’ing each other and everyone would feel great, except me of course; “feeling” great wasn’t an option. But hey, I was out “taking” pictures that day. I would try this for what would inevitably be two weeks—max—before giving up and retreating to my dungeon of despair. Why not? I responded. Why not? I grew up scoffing at photography. Besides, I suck at taking pictures, and I loathe doing things I am not good at so this seemed an ideal irrational fit. This was the conversation lobbing salvos in my head. Illogically, I said yes.
Two weeks went by. Two weeks of terrible photos. Two weeks of terrible feelings. Somehow it wasn’t all bad, even if I couldn’t feel it at the time. I was interacting with new people online, and they offered supportive commentary on my photos such as they were. I was in no place to accept the feedback, but I at least understood the purpose of a compliment—if only in the abstract. And yet, I was still clicking. Click. Click. Click.
Depression is more but it is also unknown. Unknown future. Unknown depths. Unknown self. Where is this darkness taking me? Who will I be when I get there? Hell, what will I even be when I get there? Will I call out for help? Will I be too weak? Will I see what’s right in front of me?
Six months into 2012 and I was still clicking. Click. Click. Click. About 10,000 images into the photo project, into the unknown, and my photographs were… improving? Am I starting to enjoy this? Do I have a future here? The creative outlet I’ve long craved? Can this new habit continue? Can I make landscapes to show off the beauty I’ve always known but have somehow forgotten about? Can I visually communicate the underrated beauty of southeastern New Jersey? Can I show off its coastal ways, marshlands, and pine land forests for others to know and love? Can I feel again? Can I dream again? Can I hope again? Can I be a better me again?
Depression is unknown but it is also knows defeat. Click. Click. Click.
Author’s Note:Asked to write an article for the beta issue of Break Zine back in 2017, I am sharing my article here in honor of 2019 World Mental Health Day. I have made edits to grammar and style but the spirit remains the same. As it was when Dawn and Pete asked me to share in their creative endeavor, I felt it was important to share my own struggle with depression. I want to play at least a small part to break the stigma and help others step out from the dark. You do not have to suffer alone, and it is OK and brave and wonderful to reach out for help.
