Dementors

I was reading an article today that J. K. Rowling was clinically depressed when she was in her mid-twenties and that was the basis of the "Dementors".

Depression is not being sad. It's almost as a free fall. You're trying to grasp to anything to hold onto and all the while you know it won't work. It's amazing how your mind starts working. You lose short term memory. You can't bring yourself to get yourself out of the bed. Nothing makes sense. Nothing will make you happy. There are involuntary breaks of crying. Not because you're feeling sad, but because you're feeling hollow. The world looks as if it has nothing to offer you to get you out of the pitfall. And it is true. It's amazing how your mind has you trapped. No matter how many times you go to therapy, how much medication you take, or even how many amazing things happen in your life. There are days that you wake up feeling ok and it makes you happy. You think to yourself "yes, it's finally over". But it's a matter of hours, days before you find yourself in the same pitfall again. So much so that you lose faith. Every time your mood is good, you ask, I wonder how long this will last! The dangerous thing is that you get used to it. It cozies up in your brain...takes up a whole comfy place there and makes it its home. It becomes a routine.

But if you're lucky enough, you one day realize what's caused it in the first place, that you knew all along. The things you had been trying to hold onto so hard...the things you knew as "fact". The only liberation is to let go. To not feel entrapped by obligations, by trying to make meaning out of life. Not to get fixated on what is the definition of your role in life, in society. Try to trick your mind into "being there for the ride", however much it may resist. And finally you see a hand extended to you to get you out. And it's your own.

And you still wonder how long this time it'll last. But when you wake up, one day after the other, feeling hopeful or neutral at best, that's when the light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter and brighter. You still may cry. But this time, thank god it's sadness not hollow!