Occasionally I have moments when the depression just fades away for a while, and I'm functional, productive and well... not happy, but not depressed. Neutral. It's the oddest feeling though – when I'm "better", I don't feel like myself at all, I feel more like an alternate version of me, and it doesn't feel right. I feel like the sadness when I'm depressed is part of me, and I somehow still miss it even though it's technically bad for me. It's sort of like I've seen the light and can't go back, only that the light is actually darkness and despair.
Wondering if any of yall have the same experience and if so, what do yall make of it?
Is the sadness really bad? It can be. But it can be good. It can inspire art. Move the heart. Do we not feel more poetic, and true, when in the dark, under the light of the moon? I have a deep love for sorrow. I've accepted this as part of my nature, and find myself feeling most alive when watching movies, shows, or reading books that are tragic. Somber characters tend to speak to me in a surreal level.
I believe there's a stigma against the darkness. But light does not exist without it. There's a balance to be found there. The trick is to not let yourself drown in it. To simply appreciate it, and let it flow through you like the very blood in your veins. To become a part of you, not something on the outside of you, that smothers you.
I should add it's possible you may be bipolar. I'm bipolar. It's defined by periods of mania, and depression, that come in phases. Those phases tend to last awhile. I feel at my truest, in my depressive phase, and so I often surround myself in things that being that phase out, so I can feel like me, and find peace in that. But mania can't be staved off forever. For me, my episodes mix. Mania overlaps with my depression, making me feel irritible, agitated, anxious. It's an unbearable feeling. I think this is caused by the fact that I've accepted the darkness so thoroughly, that it's always there, even when I'm not in a bipolar depressive phase. I have depression from life in general, trauma, so it's my natural state. This is the main reason I don't feel like myself when manic. It's foreign, and extremely uncomfortable. An affliction. It's usually not a problem, however, as I'm pretty good at maintaining a steady measure of depression, most of the time.
