Tears When There is No Reason to Cry

I was sitting here this morning getting ready to begin the next chapter in my novel, when I felt the corners of my eyes start to feel wet. As my eyes welled up with tears, I tried to figure out why. I mean, what do I have to be sad about? Or, possibly I’m feeling sentimental about something. As I thought, I decided I was not feeling sentimental. I was feeling sad. But why?

This feeling fortunately only lasts for a short time. I can usually concur it by focusing my mind on other things, which is funny when you consider the fact that I wasn’t focusing on anything in particular when I started feeling blue.

Okay, let me get to the depth of this. I used the word “blue,” above. It’s a word we have created to lighten the heaviness we may be feeling in our hearts. Those who suffer from depression hate the word “depression.” I mean, to depress something is to squeeze or apply pressurize on something. It is not a pleasant feeling. It feels like you are having the life literally squeezed out of you.

My way of dealing with depression is usually with my sense of humor. An example might be, just thinking about what I wrote above about squeezing. I might picture the time my husband tried to squeeze into pressure stockings. Since the knee and thigh-high stockings always slid down and cut off his circulation, he decided to try the pantyhose type stockings. The picture of the experience never fails to bring a smile to my face. I only wish we’d had a camera handy at the time because I’m certain we would have won America’s Funniest Videos.

However, anyone who suffers from depression knows that humor may only be a mask for depression. Let’s make it look like something it is not by putting on a huge smile that does not reach to our hearts.

Recent news shows that humor doesn’t always work.

I know far too many people who are depressed, which is even more depressing. Some of those people have a far more serious problem than I do. Some of them have real reasons to be depressed.

I should know better than to make that statement. I mean, a person can be depressed for no reason. Like me, this morning. So, while it may be true for someone to tell a person who is depressed that they have nothing to be depressed about, it may be a very untrue statement.

Why the contradiction? Because depression isn’t always about the things around you. It is about what is going on inside you. It has been found that depression is an imbalance in a person’s brain. There may be no visible influence from the life of the person who is depressed. They are literally being squeezed from within by an unseen force.

That may sound like some kind of science fiction plot, but it is not fiction. It is happening to too many people. Many of those people are saying they simply have the “blues,” or wearing a mask to disguise what they are feeling because they might be judged for feeling like they do when they have no reason to feel that way.

I personally have found prayer to help me. As a believer in God, I know He is stronger than anything going on inside me. I also know He has promised a better life ahead.  We just have to be patient until that time comes.

One has to look at that belief a little deeper so they don’t get any ideas about speeding up the process. While it might seem logical to end one’s life so they can move on to the perfect life that is promised, that would be taking control out of God’s hands. He is a God of perfect timing. He knows when it is time.

A non-believer may feel they just want to end the feelings that are so overwhelming. Feelings that seem like they are going on forever. But I try to look at it as not using a long term solution for a short term problem. However, for too  many people it may not seem short time.

To the believer, it is. One day if we are able to look back, the time we struggled on this Earth will be like a speck of dust and that speck will get smaller and smaller as eternity passes.

I’m not saying that depression is any less difficult for a believer than a non-believer. I’m just telling how I try to look at it.

Now there was a very telling word in the last sentence. “Try.” I have no way of knowing if one day my way of handling depression may no longer work. Knowing that depression is as much, if not more an imbalance in the brain, than outside influences, means the possibility I may one day give up.

That is why I have been open to my husband, family and friends about the disease of depression. I tell them that while I may have it under control for now, there could be a time I won’t be able to handle it. It happened with my father and from what I heard my grandfather, too.

This brings me to another sad point about the disease. It can be passed down from generation to generation.  That proves to me that the depression I feel is strongly influenced by an imbalance, since it is unlikely that the outside influences that effect my life also affected my father and grandfather. It also means it could one day happen to my sons and granddaughter.

My other solution, as I said, is to make certain those I love understand this disease and how it might one day impact them. I also have a strong group of friends who are there when I need a little help. I trust that if the time comes I cannot overcome depression alone, they will see that I get outside help.

I pray constantly that it is something that will never happen. Just as I pray for anyone else going through this problem. It is serious and it can be fatal. But it can also be overcome if we all take the time to understand a little more and be ready to get or give the help that is needed.

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#PamGarlick