The Water by the Edge of the Forest – On Depression and Healing

I know that I’m not the only one.

Although I haven’t entered the forest yet, I’ve come to realize that I’ve been playing in the small brook that sits outside of it. I can’t see the trees on my walls, but I can hear the birds within calling to me, and I have been starting to feel the breeze that passes through the leaves on my skin.

I’ve been so full of everything lately. It seems like there are too many emotions passing through me. Sitting by the waters edge has been calming, despite where the body of water resides. There is just so much. There are words that I want to write, find words for, learn how to pronounce, but there are too many of them.

A few months ago, I took the step to increase my medication. I take an antidepressant to manage my depression. I also started seeing a psychologist. I had a therapist before, so I’m no stranger to seeking help in someone that doesn’t know who I am.

Thankfully, even though I am playing near the water, letting paper boats that I have made sail slowly by, there are lights in the darkness that shine brightly. There is my beautiful husband. He doesn’t complete me as there is nothing missing.

I believe that, when the world was born, we were two. Two spirits in one body, living as one. Over time, we lost that other half of ourselves, and yet we always search for it, for the one person that we are supposed to be with.

We’re searching for that pull, waiting to feel a piece of ourselves in another person. I feel like the love I have with my husband is as if we had somehow found our way apart, two halves of one spirit, before finding the way to be together once more. We felt that spiritual pull within each other.

I have the light of my parents. Sometimes, I can see the light that is my Wonder Mom, Wonder Dad and Wonder Mom in Law like stars upon the water, fireflies that are always making sure to guide me to safety and light up the darkness that is around me so that I can see what it truly is.

There are so many friends in my life. They are lights that fill the dark velvet of the sky above me, too many stars to name in so many different colours: a fierce purple, a vibrant chocolate brown, a pink that reminds me of the sun in the mornings, filling the world with hope. They light the path away from the water that that lives by the forest where the air carries such a haunting and beautiful song in the air that surrounds those trees.

I’m okay this time. I have taken the steps that I needed to make sure that my mental health is in check and that I have balance in a world and a body that no longer makes sense. I am tired of living with fear, tired of being afraid of the people that I miss the most. I long for those lost moments where I could be one in a thousand and not feel any worry about the fact that I am surrounded by the breath of others.

Not so long ago, the breath of others used to sustain us. Now, the breath of others frightens me, not for who they are, but what their breath can contain. It’s odd, I don’t remember a night or day recently that do not live in some kind of fear, at least in some degree. It’s odd, but I’ve become so comfortable with it, so used to its embrace.

I’ve lost my motion for things. I don’t want to sit like a gargoyle on the stone, so I move, and I walk and I paint. I try to stay moving for as long as I can so that the shadows don’t have a chance to find me and pull me in.

I don’t want to disappear or lose myself in the darkness. I’m trying to find my way out of the shadows. I’m trying to set up barriers or boundaries for myself. I like to think of it like the briar wall that surrounded Aurora, that sleeping beauty, kept safe within the walls of her castle. I’ve been building, you see.

What destresses me most is that my words, where I found the most solace, have been painful for a while now. Gone are the days where I can write for a long time and lose myself in the worlds I create. I’m getting there, though. I’ve been trying to pull away the curtains that have begun to flutter, pulling them back to see clearly enough for a moment, a breath, so that I can let some words out.

Painting has been such a comfort to me. I’m able to see worlds like little windows within the confines of a canvas. Painting has been helping me to bring myself back from the brink of the shadows. I’ve loved finding my voice with my paints. I’ve known who I was as a writer for a while now. With painting, I’m just beginning to discover who I am.

While I’ve enjoyed the water by the forest, I’m tired of funning my fingers through water that never changes, water that has grown stagnant over time. I’m beginning to turn away from the water and I’m trying to walk back towards myself.

Every step matters.

Unlike the other times, when the forest has pulled me in so deeply, weaving its way under my skin so skillfully before I even realize it’s there, I know that I’ve done what I need to do so that I’m aware of the forest and the seductive danger that it holds within.

Every step matters. The only difference is that this time, I know that.