Smogeol, the smog of depression
Have you ever had the experience of looking through clouds, or fog?
I had the unfortunate (?) experience of having to walk through an insect fogging before. I could have chosen another path, but I was tired - and it was during the COVID period, so I had a mask handy. I thought, it can't be THAT bad.
Spoiler alert: it WAS that bad.
Walking through that cloud of insect repellent laden smog was an experience and a half. As you enter it, the smell hits you like a punch to the nose even through the mask. You recoil. And you start thinking, this was a baaaad move.
Then comes the confusion. In the thickness of the smog, you can't see beyond more smog. All you see are tendrils of whiteness, or a wall of whiteness, depending on where you look. You can't see the ground much, if at all. A minute or less ago, you would be sure that the path in front was danger free, and wide enough for two people to cross. But as you step forward, there is constant fear. You mutter to yourself, steady there, and remind yourself that just a bit ago, you could see to the other end of the cloud of smog and the path has no dangers in sight. You need to keep stepping forward. The escape, if you want it, is to move faster ahead.
And then suddenly everything lightens up. You start to see colours other than the gray whiteness that has enveloped even your tastebuds. You start to hear without the dulled roar of the fog emitter that the worker had just gone on by with. You start to feel lighter, and your pace quickens, and then you're out of the smog.
You pause, look behind, and grin at how silly that confusion and fear felt. It was always just a single cloud after all. There had been no need to fear or worry and already, you're thinking, I overreacted. It wasn't THAT bad after all.
Yet, given half an option, you'd never want to have that experience again.
Depression is kinda like that. Except... worse.
There're a few key differences. No one chooses willingly to walk into the cloud that is depression. No one sees the cloud and decides, that's something I can overcome so let's go into it and walk out the other side. The clouds of depression don't rise - it's more of descending into its depths. You can't really tell you're descending, even if there are warning signs that you're in trouble because there IS a fog at chest level and below. And you can't see the ground, but you keep walking because you have to, or you're told to have faith in the unseeable future. So you keep stepping and treading, and then suddenly, like a sudden unmarked drop in a 5m pool, you find that you're IN the fog.
Flailing doesn't work. Screaming increases the sound bouncing back at you. You seem to hear voices around you, that might help you get back to safety, out of the fog, but they are distorted and you can't tell which direction to turn. You react by pushing away at anything that comes close because it might hurt you as it did in the past before the fog. You can't trust. You can't hope. You can't see. You're trapped in that loneliness with only your feelings and thoughts, and boy are they some thoughts. And feelings. Boy oh BOY.
I'm having trouble writing this because of how real it is to me. Are we having fun yet?
What happens, then, when you see a hand reach out to you? It's just a hand looming out of the gray wall. It means nothing. It could pull you to safety, or it could jerk you forward into pain. And falls. You can choose to take it, and sometimes we do take it, and the hand slaps us in the face instead. Perhaps, as they say, the slap was given with the best of intentions. Perhaps, we just need to wake up out of the smog. But we wake up and the smog remains while the slapping hand gets to walk away feeling like they did us some good. We just chose not to listen.
But when that hand is attached to a kind voice, or that hand is one that is known to be safe, or that voice tells us, we're here to help, and we're here to talk you gently through the fear because it IS freaking scary, what you're going through, it becomes a little easier to take the hand.
There's a lot of nuance to this of course. Sometimes we still slap the kind hand away no matter how many times it gets offered. Sometimes, we just stop everything and stand still because the fog is too deep and there is nothing to be seen in any direction. Sometimes, we whisper to ourselves that in this smog, no one will notice if I'm gone. Sometimes, we just run blindly, never minding the other bodies we hit, or the cuts and bruises that come from falling onto gravel and then still crawling and running because that is all we can allow ourselves to do.
I'm sharing this to explain, no one chooses the fog. Most people are pushed into the fog by the past or circumstances. It's not all hopeless - because sometimes, I see my wife and boys peering at me worriedly through the fog, and I reach towards them. I don't want to walk forward, because what's the point. But for them, I will.
And sometimes, it's God's warmth that slips through the fog. He hasn't chosen to remove the fog with a wave of a magic wand. Perhaps so I can describe the fog to others, so that they too, can seek the help they need.
Medicine helps. Medicine helps us to not panic, and look carefully at the next step. Therapy helps us to make sense of the fog, thinning it in places. The more this happens, the more I see things like my values, or the glimmerings of my identity. The idea that I can do something that matters to me, allowing me to step in that direction, instead of stumbling blindly into yet another hole dug by the people in my past, or dug by myself as a protection.
Because, hey, if I'm slapping myself, it'll hurt less when someone else slaps me by telling me how much they don't want me in their lives because I'm not what they think a good human being should be like.
The worst part? No one else SEEMS to be able to see the fog that is so real to you. You try to describe it and you only get confused looks. You try to explain it, and people just shake their heads and walk away. Only the kind few will sit, listen, nod, and then, placing their arm around you, give you a hug that makes you finally feel like someone cares, even if they don't understand.
So the next time you feel tempted to tell someone to just get over something, consider that you're pushing them into the fog, instead of helping them by working with them to understand why there's fog in the first place. Consider too, that people already in the fog, are not there by choice. Yanking on them and pulling hard will only injure them - because you, in all your good intention, cannot see the path that is ahead of them. You're trying to force someone to walk the path you're on. You never realised that they're on a different path altogether - and in a fog so thick you'd find horrible to taste.
So please, be kind. Please offer your hand, don't slap it in their faces. And please please, let them know you're there for them, not force them to be where you are.
(Images taken from Image by Elias from Pixabay and John from Pixabay because I don't have good fogged pictures.)
