This morning’s post is brought to you by my daughter’s language arts class. Upon occassion she challenges me with one of their assignments and I find the results rather interesting. The assignment was to write an essay about an epiphany.
Epiphany. The dictionary states that epiphany means several things but for today’s musing it means the following:
a. A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something.
b. A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization. ~The American Heritage Dictionary – iPhone edition.
I have struggled with depression most of my life. There was no life changing event, just a gradual gradiance from colour to varying shades of gray. On that note, there is also nothing in particular upon which to assign blame. The curious twist of fate in the genetic crapshoot. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Thanks to the modern miraculous combination of pharmacologic supplementation and therapeutic intervention, my world has slowly emerged from the depths of grayness. I suppose one could call it remission, but in a moment of extreme clarity I realized the other day that it is more like a journey. A virtual traversal into the depths of hell and back, but a journey none the less.
I am at the point where the colours around me have emerged from the grey and there are parts of reality that call out, begging to be reclaimed. I remember attempting to write a novel in third grade. I remember the complements but still cringe at the memory of the critical shoe dropping stroke of the red pen slashing corrections to my creative writing papers to the point where I barely recognized the words as my own.
Then there was that poetry class in the eighties, where my work apparently lacked the esoterically mythology links to appease the critical ears of my classmates. As I think back, it is all part of the journey. Finding the courage to read the eulogy at Mrs. Guard’s funeral was a liberating event.
Likewise my epiphany on depression. There is no magic moment of curedness. There is an explosion of wonderment as I travel this unique path, exploring the world around me and I am finding that living with depression is a daily reality of struggle and enlightenment.
You are on your way.
Rachel Remen is one of my favorite writers, and she talks of having a doctor as a patient who could find no joy in his work. She asked him to write down every day three things that surprised him. He resisted somewhat, but went to it.
At first, the things that surprised him were that a tumor hadn’t grown in so-and-so, that sort of thing; but gradually he became more aware of the feelings of those patients, and surprised himself one day by noticing how well taken care of the small children were of the young mom before him, ill with cancer. He told her that her love for them was a great strength and that he believed it would see her through this.
She was intensely grateful, and thanked him for that.
And he couldn’t wait to tell Dr. Remen; the whole thing had been such a surprise to him, so different now from how he might once have been seeing that appointment.
It’s a process.
And what a journey it is, indeed:) Well put. You have a way with words.