Death of the Melancholy by Kate Foley
Baseball is America’s pastime, along with its equally likely depression. Life in the United States has a lot of depressive elements to it. Nobody escapes. Everybody experiences it together. Happiness feels elusive out within America’s slow moving favorite game.
Symptoms of depression take on a wide variety of forms, no two exactly alike. Hiding depression hurts. People have a difficult time talking about it. When a person says they are depressed, usually the other person says “same” but does not engage in any more meaningful fashion. Roommates do not understand, as the typical roommate concerns themselves mostly with if everybody is going to pay the rent on time. Anything else is pretty much unimportant compared to the idea of being able to stay sheltered from countless waves of rain.
The showering lifestyles tries to replicate the power of a rainstorm but for hygiene purposes. People enjoy thinking in showers. Sounds within a shower help to shelter away from the pain of the world. By singing in a shower any remaining trace of the outside world melts away, like so much Ben & Jerry ice cream in the hot sun. Movement occurs with deliberate slowness out in the shower lands. Most of this slow movement is due to the treacherous terrain that defines such an environment, the likelihood of slipping always a very real one.
Many hours pass during a depressive episode. It hurts a lot. Not every depressive episode feels the same each other comes from a different angle and a different place. Defeat of depression takes years to truly defeat, and even then it continues to linger, popping up in new unexpected ways.
Depression often passes. Nobody knows why. One moment there, the next gone, depression can linger for days or pass by in a moment. The mind remains one of the most unknowable things in the universe. Animals at least have their instincts on why such a thing would occur. People are never quite as lucky. Instead a person could entertain others with the idea that the bad times will go away. Many times they do, sometimes they permeate entire friend groups thanks to a singular external event.
Happiness relies on this depression. The balance needs to exist. People simply could not appreciate happiness if they did not realize that there is a reverse emotion. By having a range, those good moments can be appreciated so much more. Deep in the throes of depression happiness appears to be incredibly unlikely, the most unlikely of all events. Yet happiness returns to all people, no matter how bleak their circumstances.
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