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i hate feeling this way. i don’t want to feel this way anymore.

i’m extremely sad today and i don’t know why

When we must change or challenge an old way of being or thinking, depression may be the state that many of us enter to deal with the crisis and hopefully emerge from it more true to ourselves. Whether depression entails a slowdown or a complete halt in our daily life, its symptoms may be necessary for us to reroute or change directions emotionally, so that we can either continue along the road to self-actualization or perhaps discover it for the first time. Self-actualization may or may not lead to greater happiness or fulfillment, however, because many times, ignorance is still bliss.

Greater self-knowledge tends to “burst our bubbles” and tears down walls we’ve spent years building to protect ourselves. Unfortunately, human beings are driven to the path that leads to greater truth. Whether the truth is forced on us through circumstances that are beyond our control or we (un)consciously set ourselves up to discover it, truth is like a baby: it is born out of pain and suffering. Sometimes, when the pain and suffering are too great, we give ourselves an emotional anesthetic that numbs things for a while and manifests as depression.

Even when deprssion seems to come out of nowhere, it is the body’s and soul’s way of getting us to stop and think about our life. Depression invariably comes from somwhere. It may be a state we enter to save ourselves from decisions or actions that can lead to bad consequences. For example, Antti Mattila, M.D., a Finnish researcher who has explored why we get depressed from a philisophical perspective, suggests that the inability to act or commincate has a larger purpose for people at different crossroads in life. When we find our values and goals shifting or stirring, and we’re in a state of confusion, often the worst thing we can do is act or make a decision. That period of indecision is valuable because it enables us to stop and reflect.

There may also be a larger purpose to the anxiety and melancholy that accompany the confusion or inaction we experience with depression. For example, the philosopher Kierkegaard believed that periods of depression (which he described as melancholy and angst) are simply part of authentic human existence; in short, a person who never knows melancholy will never know metamorphosis. And he described angst as a sign that one is realizing the field of possibilities that comes from free will. It is a time when a person contemplates past choices or circumstances and thinks about ways to make new choices or change his or her circumstances.

Heidegger, another philosopher, suggests that anxiety is also part of the human experience and an indication that the world (situations, relationships, contracts, etc) isn’t “working” for us anymore, forcing us to reconstruct the world around us.

In other words, when you’re in a rut or feel trapped by life’s circumstances, sadness and suffering or depression can be your mind’s and body’s way of saying, “Wake up and change.” In this case, the only way to stop the suffering is to change the conditions of your life (as in leaving a job you hate) or at least change the way you view the conditions of your life (as in seeing a layoff as something that has allowed you to go back to school and change professions rather than as a curse). In other words, if you can’t change your life, you can still change your perspective on it, which can be a huge life-changing event, even though the conditions of your life remain the same.

(taken from 50 Ways to Fight Depression Without Drugs)

fortressoffoxes:

radpartment

anniebbaby:

I tend to stay away from overly-symbolic explanations for things, particularly tattoos. My best friend once said that there’s never really a good reason to get a tattoo, and he’s right. You either get one, or you don’t. You mean it, you want it, you intend for it, or not.

But for this particular one, I can’t resist sharing a few words.

It’s a W, more precisely, the W from “The Washington Post,” my hometown newspaper and the paper that my Dad has written for for over 30 years. With the exception of his mother, father, brother and sister, it is the longest relationship he has maintained. It is the reason he was in the Philippines, the necessary precursor to meeting my mother. The indirect protagonist to my birth.

It is the cause for his long absences in the early part of my childhood. When he was home, I would often conjure up long, dramatic stories on an old apple desktop just so I could spend time in my Dad’s home office. Unbeknownst to me, while I was going to school in Manila and finding baby rabbits in my backyard, my father was covering the Gulf War. The only indication I had of the nature of his work came one day in the summer, when he showed me the gas mask he had to wear in the desert. The sight of him wearing it terrified me, he looked like a mutant mosquito. Later, I would stumble across the pictures he had taken while he was away: monstrous jeeps piled high with charred, burned bodies — many of them dismembered.

Like the New York Times and other old titans of the newspaper industry, the Washington Post masthead was designed by hand, therefore it can’t be replicated by browsing through the fonts in your word processor. It is singular. My Dad continues to work for the paper, as a contributing editor for “continuous news” (i.e. the online division). It still thrills me to see his byline on the front page, under that masthead which has been such a significant character in my life.

Now, of course, everyone is forecasting the death of the Great American Newspaper, at the very least, the newspaper as we know it.

And it terrifies me. It terrifies and saddens me to think that, if I ever have kids, I won’t be able to open up a newspaper to them and say “this, this is what your grand-daddy did. He made the news. People began their days to his words. People used his words to fuel their discussions and form and reform their opinions. He loved his work, he was good at it, and he helped people because of it.”

So I got this one letter: my own minute testimonial to one man, and one newspaper, and one city.

if i were to get a tattoo based on this story, i would have to get an USMC (United States Marine Corps) logo or something because thats how my dad ended up in the Philippines and met my mom. I was also thinking of getting the exact bulldog tattoo that he got while he was in service as a father’s day gift but totally as a joke. because he hates tattoos and flipped when i got my first one (he said “I am very disappointed in you” and I hate the usmc. I don’t know though, i’m thinking about it. it would be a funny joke but do i really want to live with that?

you should write more entries like this. i really like your writing style.