I’m not chronically depressed anymore, but I have these odd periods of sadness.
There’s something clingy about sadness. The exhaustion of having-been-crying earlier, the lingering mopey-ness that can feel like an inner tension, the inability to let go of feelings because you don’t know what to do with them yet, or because they won’t let go of you. Sometimes sadness just seems like an accumulation of different things that you can’t give an account of. When it has no clear object and no narrative, sadness can just be a hesitation, a way of holding on that might also be a holding back.
I’m blundering around through moods, trying to find something solid in something formless. Sometimes I have periods that seem like minor depressive episodes; I never know quite why they happen, or when to expect them. I think I know myself, and then I realize it was an illusion.
Sometimes I feel very lost in writing, and then I remember that it almost always works to write about what's real, what's close to home, what you're really struggling with, even if it's often delicate to describe since it touches on our real relationships to others. No one has ever taught me to write about all these things. I’m making it all up, trying to find a way to narrate the static and silence of our situation.