Depression, Connection, and Disconnection

Having lived with depression most of my life I think I’ve come to learn a thing or two about depression.  It amazes me how the realization takes place in the presence of others.  It was through conversing with people suffering severe depression that I’ve come to see a thing or two about one of the most significant experiences in my life.  I’ve been living a very disconnected life.  Perhaps feeling disconnected is a better representation.  When you are depressed you just feel wrong.  Your being is a collection of negativity and hence all experiences are experienced as negative, as not supposed to be, as insufficient even when it may not be at all.  It pushes you to the boundary, to live on the edge.  It is a constant reminder that you are not what you suppose to be.  You are just wrong.  This sense of oneself raises a very high level of consciousness.  And self-consciousness leads to a sense of disconnection.  Connection, to my understanding, is about spontaneity.  And spontaneity emerges from a sense of safety, a core feeling that one is ok.  Disconnection is when you are conscious of the fact that you are not where you ought to be.  As one proceeds in life being conscious of where one ought to be, things become artificial in an attempt to align oneself with the logic of life, with all the oughts.  The harder one tries, the more disconnected one feels because connection is based on the assumption that where one is is good enough.  There’s nothing to prove.  This is a good place to be.  The challenge of a depressed person such as myself is to learn to maintain the tension by becoming aware of the redemption for the person that I am while keeping in mind the  distinction from the chemically generated emotion that emerges continually.