Summer Raindrops

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Closer.

My favourite song, meaningful leh. Just let it play along as we go through the text.


Yar, it can be pretty difficult to live with a depressing person. Then again, we may have to get used to this fact, as I now realise that there are many who are living in this little red dot, that has some kind of depression, or a gloomy outlook in life. I had counseled many, in all forms and state of depression, and had successfully ignite some of their fire in their cold and forgotten stove, hopefully the fire will keep them warm throughout their life. For a person suffering from depression, everything seems to be gloomy and doom to end up in one final sad state, a sad nothing, and every issue seems to be a reason to cry on, or to be sad and take pity on oneself.

Depression basically sucks you dry, and leaves nothing behind except a distorted pair of spectacles, by which you will probably put it on after you had finally grow tired of crying and wiped that last burst of tears away. Then only to see a distorted pity patty sad world, with a great grey overcast sky and a lot of pricky grasses which you stepped on, and they make you cry again. That in a nutshell, is depression...

How do I know it? I had a period of unhealthy dose of all this before of course..., in the earlier part of my life that is. And a significantly long period that covers almost most of my teen years. Much damage had been done, with the greatest being... lost opportunities. That is, lost of the time (teen years) that should had been invested in building up oneself, and of course, to take up one-in-a-lifetime challenging endeavours (for example, entrepreneurship? flying? backpacking? etc etc).

But to date, I had managed to overcome it. One will never be able to overcome it unless one catches a glimpse of what is in life, or the purpose of life, or what life has to offer, or what you can offer to your own life. Well, be it though religion, or through self-learned principles of life. Depression can be cured by having a purpose in life. Huh! I'll say it again. Depression can be destroyed, or a better word will be, to render it useless (and thus no longer depressing anymore as you basically come to terms with it), when you know what you want to do with your life. Basically what you like your life to be. How it will be like. And what you want to see and experience in life itself, and how this may affect the people surrounding your life. Of course to MOST people in this little red dot, knowing what you really want is a task that is more difficult than the ERP system lowering their charges during peak hours. But then again, if you were to tied everything with symbols and analogies (I'll talk about analogies in the next few articles), nothing is really difficult. On a higher and simplified order, it is like the counter girl asking what flavour of ice-cream you want to go with your brownies.

"Sir we have mango, vanilla, chocolate chip, ... ".

So how do you decide on this? You basically imagine the taste of mango flavour, vanilla flavour, etc, ice-cream melting in your mouth, and then extrapolating that to the feeling that comes with it, and then, you tell the girl what you want. Walah! You just made a decision. That is the same as choosing a purpose for your life style. And of course, flavours can change with the seasons. Even though you maybe choosing vanilla flavour all your life, you may switch to try a new flavour halfway down your life, say when you suddenly discovered rum 'n raisin, or get introduced or psycho-ed to some revolutionary new flavour of lifestyle, maybe some curry flavour ice-cream (Why not? there is wasabi flavour right?)

Ah! By you can then argue that this is you and your own battle... right? Yes, of course. Settling your own issue, on your own terms, and in your own time frame, is certainly much easier.

But to constantly be with a person that has depression? Or worse, a person that is stricken with the well of depression for so long that he or she had already forgotten the colour of the evening sky...
Believe me it is not worth the experience. It drains you of everything that you believed and hoped in, and it pissed on every fire that you light to keep warm in the darkness.

Living and trying to help a person with depression is really a depressing and emotionally demanding task. It is worse than losing something dear in your life. Anyway, me and my wife just lost our 6 weeks child. It was a difficult experience and leaves me in a great state of puzzle and sorry for most of the time. Don't know whether to cry or to think of explanations. Anyway I do feel better after hiding in the toilet and cry over the lost, during those draining periods of time.

Arrrhh.. I shall not end with a gloomy ending. These recent few posts seems to be rather gloomy in nature... and this blog should be refreshing raindrops in a warm summer mid-day.

How do you then overcome this? Or how should I go about helping and providing emotional first aid to such a person, especially when all means of consoling and problem source tracing had all been performed and the person is still choosing to wallow in that pity patty sad state of his or her? Well, I'm not a psychiatrist, and am certainly too drained to be a counselor anymore. But I will still forked out my common sense and say, there is no way I can help. There is no way a person can help a sufferer apart from providing physical, emotional, and spiritual care and support to the sufferer. It is up to the person to see his or her follies, and picked himself or herself up, and MAKE a decision to understand himself or herself better, so as to be able to start tracing to the source of the depression. The sufferer can choose to continue to wallow in a muddy pool or self pity and tears, or to bravely do a recapped and review of his or her life, much like that of an anti-virus scanner, to catch and quarantined those suspected area of his/her life for removal latter. Only by making a decision to understand and an effort to try, and at the same time, accepting the support from people who are there to help, can the person improves and understand more on his or her situation, and then later... figure out life, and much latter, to recall and laughed at his/her once depressing state.

We got to move closer to what we really are ...