Taking Depression Out For A Stroll

I experimented with something this week.  I wish it concerned teleportation or anti-gravity pills, but sadly, it did not.  It was something that people with depression try so that they can keep the Blue Passenger at bay.

(The series Dexter used the term ‘dark passenger’ to refer to the voice in the character’s head that motivated him to kill.  I loved the phrase but I needed to knock it down a few shades to refer to depression.  I think it fits.)

First, let’s set the scene. I’m okay.  We’re all adjusting to a somewhat quieter cultural life.  At least the decibels have been turned down.  I’m in good health, my family is as well.  I have a few fun times planned on the calendar.  We can’t find a house but we’re hanging in there with a good savings.  Things are good.  But the Blue Passenger called depression and his sidekick Anxiety don’t give a damn.  They barge in whenever they feel like it.

I’ve been medicated for about a decade now.  Those two punk-asses have soft voices and the synapses that weren’t firing before naturally are much stronger.  It just means when old Blue shows up, I can easily kick him out of the house.  He doesn’t stay for weeks on end stinking up the place and clogging my toilet. 

But no matter what I do, he will return.  Always. 

The experiment is based on my reaction to his arrival or anticipating when he will come.  The previous exercises were designed to give my bouncer a workout to get bigger and stronger, so I could oust the Blue Passenger when he got too rowdy. This one was designed treated him like a petulant or spoiled child, while I was the patient parent.

When he reared his head.  I let him go. 

I can’t remember the impetus.  It was only a few days ago but I’ve already forgotten.  Something came up or something was said that in the past, would make me feel insignificant, dumb, invisible…a failure.  I have trained myself to grab Blue by the collar and chuck him out on his ass.  This time, I gave him the run of the place.  I let him say every stupid, terrible, horrible, insensitive, morbid thing to me.  I was working, so he kept coming back with new insults every few minutes as I went about my day.  How worthless I was.  How many mistakes I’ve made. How I’m a fraud.  But I kept on going.  I just did my job with an absolute asshole berating me inside my head.  Until it got as dark as dark could be.  Until he was screaming and his voice went hoarse.

Eventually, he stopped.  I don’t remember when, exactly, because it got easier and easier to ignore him.  I reached the point when he was nothing but a commenter of the internet who thinks he knows better than a trained expert.  He was all noise.  All bluster.  If he becomes a figure like that, even in your imagination, your mind wants to know who he is and where he comes from.  The Blue Passenger has no purpose.  He has no assigned seat at the table in my brain.  He’s just a bully and a party crasher.

He ruins it for everyone.

So, he returned to his dank corner, tail between his legs, with nothing to show for it, and I bought an iced latte to wash down the experience.  Nothing particularly revelatory about myself, no new insights. But a precedent was set.

If you’re up to it, give it a try.  Let that jerkface loose for a bit.  You might be able to separate him from who you truly are inside your mind and acknowledge him as the sad fool that he’s always been.