r_tr_sp_ct__n

Meet me in Montauk.

Times of the Day

It’s an active choice

And it has to be remade every day

Something as trivial as making the bed

To some people, it isn’t necessary

But to others, it’s everything

Choosing to be happy every day

is sort of like that.

And I’m still learning that it’s okay for me to want it for myself.

I wrote this 5 years ago in December.

I was 24.

Since then, I’ve heard the same sentiment— happiness is a choice.

But is it?

My boyfriend believes in LSD, in taking mushrooms and eventually dimethyltryptamine. Each can be categorized as a chemical substance. Most occurring in plants and animals - both of which derives from and is structurally analogous to chemical compounds.

Chemicals. Basically.

Then you can say that my boyfriend believes in chemicals, right? Ingesting chemicals for some introspection, for some fun. 

So what’s so difficult to understand about me?

Depression.

All my life, I’ve heard the same sentiment— depression results from a chemical imbalance.

Yet, this figure of speech doesn’t capture how complex the disease is.

Genetic vulnerability. Traumatic life events.

The Journal of Neuroscience published a study based on 24 women who had a history of depression. On average, the hippocampus was 9% to 13% smaller in a depressed woman.

So is it really an active choice?

Popular lore has it that emotions reside in the heart. Science, though, tracks the seat of your emotions to the brain.

Trauma shatters your most basic assumptions about yourself and your world. From thoughts like “Life is good,” “I am safe,” “People are kind,” “I can trust others,” “The future is likely to be good”. Trauma takes these basic assumptions and replaces them with feelings like “The world is dangerous,” “I can’t win,”“People are out to hurt you.”

Depression is a funny thing. It is more than just “feeling a little sad”. Some days or most days for me, I do not feel any sadness. Rather, depression oftentimes dwindles down to a more visceral routine. It becomes 

keys. 

wallet. 

cellphone. 

It sometimes becomes a part of you. 

And yet, I still believe that broken people are some of the most beautiful. Because we have to put ourselves back together every day.