For my days vanish like smoke; my bones burn like glowing embers.My heart is blighted and withered like grass; I forget to eat my food.
In my distress I groan aloud and am reduced to skin and bones.
I am like a desert owl, like an owl among ruins.
I lie awake; I have become like a bird on a roof.
(Psalm 102)
This part of Psalm 102 really hit me as seeming to quite accurately describe how having depression can sometimes feel like. I especially feel the imagery captures some of my experience.
Days can often seem to disappear. I go through the motions, but I look back and I can’t think of what those days contained. It’s like going through life in a haze, everything is obscured. Before you know it, days are flying by and you can’t seem to grasp them.
Some days you wake up and you are so tired you can feel it deep in your bones. The inexplicable aches and pains, are just some of the physical symptoms of depression.
It can feel like I have stopped caring, my heart has shrivelled up and I’m no longer able to feel. I go numb and I start to disconnect.
I have already talked in a previous post about how my depression can affect my eating habits.
“Like an owl among ruins”. This feels symbolic of me looking out over my life and thinking that it hasn’t gone too well. That I’ve messed things up. In the depths of my depression I have felt that there is no hope, and everything is forever ruined. I know now that that is not the case, but I can still sometimes feel that lonly feeling of being alone in a wilderness.
I can disconnect from reality sometimes, it’s like I’m not really in the world. I’m not affecting the world, and I’m just passing through passively. Things are happening to me, and I’m vaguely aware of them but everything is muffled slightly.