I usually carefully select what I want to read; it depends on how it would make me feel, how it would make me grow, how it would add value to my life, my experience as a human being.
But right now, in the throes of depression I find it impossible to read anything at all. And so I allowed my mind to relax a little, to read what makes me happy, even if it’s something inane that my usual reader’s snobbishness (I’ve accused other people of it, but I do concede that I suffer from it too) wouldn’t ever accept.
I need some light reading. Something sappy, something that is a written equivalent of watching a senseless tv show.
I don’t think my depression has ever been as bad as this before, and it feels weird to not be able to do the thing (as voraciously as I normally do) that makes me feel most at home in my body.
I imagine most people around the world are probably experiencing an unprecedented bout of collective depression in these uncertain times. I hope you find something that gets you through this.
For me at the moment that something is Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. It’s life affirming, and full of things I’d normally find banal because I’ve come across enough motivational speeches to know how the format goes, to know how a certain play of words can make you feel strengthened and rejuvenated. Think of this book as a long motivational speech, but you’re a child. A child who is being read to, a child afraid of growing up, afraid of a future that is scary and distant and all too real.
For the coming months I choose to hold on to anything that makes me happy. That’s the only way to move forward and emerge at the other end, triumphant and relieved at having survived one of the darkest periods I’ve ever had the misfortune of entering.
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