seashellies:

I had an interesting conversation with thornedlily Sunday night/early Monday morning that I wanted to share with you guys (their permission has been granted). This metaphor was new to me but the revelation was not, even though it was new to her.

Topic was depression.

I confided to her that I can feel my depression rearing its head for another black bout. She then compared depression to a wild, unbroken young horse that you have to coax back into its stall with a carrot. I found that analogy brilliant and told her so. She laughed and then said you could go crazy with the analogy if you wanted. Like braiding glitter into the horse’s hair and keeping the spiders away from it to keep it happy.

But really, that analogy works! Depression isn’t just this dark infection that you can never walk away from. It’s flexible. It’s fluid. With depression you have to learn what ‘breed’ you have. You need to learn what triggers it to arise in you. You need to learn to resist the impulse to collapse into it and feed it along. You need to learn if and how you can head off a bout. You need to learn what proactive coping mechanism works for you be it medication, therapy, or other, or all of the above. You need to learn to open yourself up instead of shutting yourself away.

So yeah… if a glittery mane and no spiders are what tames your horse by all means break out the tinsel and braid some in. Spider-proof that stall and then close the door and walk away. At least until you can feel the wildness breaking free again.

I’m not even trying to be ablest. I’m telling you to be proactive about your depression. I learned this lesson early and from necessity. My mom is 50 and she’s just now trying to learn this lesson after living the life of an addict. The struggle I see in her trying to learn this at her age, changing her entire life, relearning everything she thought she knew about herself and her mental illness… it’s heartbreaking. I have other family that never learned it at all and they’re miserable living miserable lives. At this point they’re too deep in their misery, too used to it to try and climb out. I want to save as many people as I can from the fate of black life lived in misery. You CAN walk away from depression. Sometimes for good, and sometimes just for a little while, but you have to figure out how to tame it in the process if you let it run wild it’ll shit all over your life. I promise you, you will come out stronger for it.

Don’t believe me? Watch this.