The hardest thing with depression is that outside of clinical speak, there isn’t a set standard on how it impacts every individual from a “feels” standpoint. I have been asked this question multiple times, “What does depression feel like?”. This is almost an impossible task because the way depression makes ME feel could be quite different than how it makes others suffering from it feel.

After pondering for years on how it strictly affects me, I will take a swing at it from my viewpoint to put the “feeling” into wording below:

Depression is like a dark street and you’re all alone on it. There is absolutely no light anywhere as you begin your arduous journey walking in search of anything. There are no other people, no animals, and no movement. You’re familiar with the street because you have seen it a million times, its hauntingly alone and empty. No detail has changed since the last time you journeyed up it a day, a week, or a month ago. After walking for what seems like an eternity, you spot a flickering light ahead. The light source is a dim street light casting a conical of weak yellow and orange light. You’re exhausted, but you haven’t traveled far at all.

As you continue to get closer to the light, you feel the warmth and the safeness being radiated from the street light’s weak haze. You are so feeble from the steep climb that your legs no longer work like they should. You begin to crawl, that crawl becomes a drag as you inch your way just to reach this street light. Even though this light should have been replaced decades ago and the ballast gives off an annoying hum, to you this street light is the brightest lighthouse saving you from the rocks below the surf break that you can’t see.

With herculean effort you finally make it next to that weak yellow and orange light as you cautiously put your hand in it. Once in, your hand begins to tingle and you feel sensations that are new and foreign. You begin to feel warmth, fulfillment, and relief. You ease your head into the light, you begin to feel love, peace, and happiness. You are so ready for those things, you are so ready to heal. With one last mighty effort you push your entire body under the street light.

As soon as the last molecular part of your being makes it into the moon-like light being cast upon the street, the street light starts to flicker. The humming from the ballast in the lamp slowly dies as does the light it emits. The warmth goes away and the feeling of love abruptly stops. The feelings of peace and happiness are vehemently replaced by anger and turbulence. And much to your dismay the next street light all the way down at the end of the road lights up and its weak cast of light begins calling for you. The journey down that same dark street starts all over again, over and over for eternity.

Darren Deason 10/29/2019

Stay away from the people who are bullshit sponges.

These people allow you to invest into them in a capacity they know they cannot return. They willingly suck up all your time and have no problem absorbing every ounce of your efforts. They will continuously allow you to go above and beyond for them knowing they cannot return or match your efforts in any relationship, platonic or not.

Then when the moment comes, when you are squeezed dry and left empty, when you have absolutely nothing more left to give; you will feel the need to start squeezing these people to reciprocate your efforts. You ask them to provide the basics of any healthy relationship. To value you and to help you when you’re in need, or just to act like you’re important to them.

In the end, all these people are capable of is flooding you with bullshit excuse after bullshit excuse on why they can’t reciprocate. They will deflect and find ways to justify their selfish ways. Eventually they succeed in turning things on you and making everything your fault, when in reality they are just shitty people that play bullshit games. These people will never be happy, nor will they allow people whom love them to reach happiness.

These people are toxic and will drain you to a dried bone. These people who qualify as bullshit sponges are best thrown away from your life and tossed aside before true damage is done to your emotional being.

Such a foreign emotion.
My heart in a race.
I take a sip of the potion.
Fingers dance and trace.
Skin so soft, mind in motion.

Such a different feeling.
You pressed against me leaning.
I feel my soul charge, healing.
Happiness, is this it’s meaning?
Lips so perfect, mind reeling.

Your presence an unequivocal eruption.
I look into your dazzling eyes.
A lighted Aurora melting the corruption.
You’re my star in the blackest of skies.
I am unworthy of you, my assumption.
This darkness returns after goodbyes.

Until we meet again, the light of my life.

Darren Deason 08/30/2019

I can’t hide you from life or the pain.
I can’t stop the hurt.
Or when the tears fall like rain.
I can’t give you all my strength.
Only to keep you sane
I can’t stop time or the world.
And I can’t break chain.

But, I can love you.
Yeah.
That I can do.

I won’t always get things right.
I won’t promise there won’t be arguments or fights.
I won’t tell you I’ll be at every game or be home every night.

What can I try to do?

I can love you with all my might
And some days might not get things right
But Try? Yeah, that I can do.
Son I love you.

The thing I want most, to protect you from the things that made me, me.
I hope maybe one day you’ll see, I pray one day you’ll be.
My greatest achievement in life – You being better than me.

The life you live, the pain you feel.
I want it to only be yours, and I only want it to be real.
Not something emulated or learned from me, my weakness isn’t a part of this deal.

At the end, I hope you get all my strength.
Only the things that make me great.
I hope you have the will to take this lead.
I won’t always be here, please let the darkness die with me.

Son, I love you.

Darren Deason 10/14/2019

When you look at me, what do you see.

Do you see me or a reflection of what I could be?
The image in the mirror when the weight of the world starts to effect me.
A dance with blackness as my past consumes thee.

The figure in the mirror isn’t sin, but sin done unto me.

I slip away as the darkness rips at me.

It is your sins placed for me to carry at my feet.

The light that hides me from the shadows become wary. The battle between light and dark slowly making me weak.

I slip further away as the darkness rips into me.

The battle enraged, a losing endeavor to remained unseen.
What image do you see, when you look at me?
Is it strength and a smile? Or is it the misery that I internally keep? Is it the good? Because it’s the emptiness that makes me weep.
For I do not love myself, I don’t even know what love means.

The darkness consumes me.

I try to forgive the damage but forgiveness you do not seek. Slowly killing me, the demons placed at my feet.

You watch me drown and cope with by drink.

Into the darkness I sink.
When you look at me, what do you see?

Darren Deason 06/18/2019

Thank you for joining me on this adventure of mine as I battle with depression. From here I am unsure where exactly this road of words will take us in life, I just hope the future chapters are better than the chapters already in dried ink.

If you’re alive; you write a new word with every breath you take, every exhale becomes a sentence, and every action forms a paragraph. Over time the story of your life flows as the story in your book grows.

My story is about personal growth, perseverance, and writing my own destiny against all odds and I am beyond excited to write and share my foreseeable chapters of life here with those willing to read them.

Depression is something I have been battling with a very long time and over the years I have found a few things that have worked to keep me from sinking too deep. Traditionally reading novels, staying busy, building things with my hands, and keeping my mind engaged on puzzles like Sudoku helped me stay afloat. That all changed on me three months ago and those things no longer did the job as needed.

Upon realizing this the panic became real as I could feel the oncoming onslaught of darkness nipping at my heels. I started searching for a new way to combat it, anything and everything. I was struggling. One day I had an epiphany that maybe if I write how I am feeling, maybe – just maybe it could help me understand what it is that causing this. So I started writing and I let the words flow like tears. My emotions tingled through my finger tips as my brain sent electrical pulses to the nerves in my hand, creating a fluidity of movement as pen met paper.

As it turns out, I discovered am actually pretty good at writing and capturing the raw emotions of how I’m feeling and now I am here to share my writings with you. 

My goal with this Blog is to help someone and by in way help myself. If you battle with depression and you are unable to put words to feelings, maybe my words can help you verbalize your own pain. Within the ability to be able to verbalize your pain, maybe this act can give you the power to defeat it through personal understanding. At the minimum I genuinely hope it will help someone in pursuit of professional help to better articulate their own depression and receive better treatment as result.  Brothers and Sisters, we are in this together. 

My name is Darren Deason and this is my battle with depression. 

 Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton