I know why I like music so much: It makes me feel something.
Depression sucks all the color out of experiences. Depression is apathy, it is lethargic, it is inertia. In the grip of depression, I feel nothing. I feel no hate, no anger, no love, no pleasure. Nothing.
Music lends me emotions. I borrow them until I can feel my own.
Depression has led me to allow a lot of abuse in my life. It kept me from leaving an emotionally abusive ex-husband. Eventually he left me. I filed for divorce two years after he said goodbye. Depression kept me from fighting that rapist; I was emotionally paralyzed, mentally separated from my body; nothing mattered.
Depression has prohibited me from expressing emotion, because I had none to express.
Is emotion the primary source of human motivation? You'd think so if you could watch the reel of my life. I never accomplished much that I wanted to accomplish. My ambitions have been stymied by involuntary inertia.
Depression has kept me from laughing at my son's jokes. It has kept me from hugging my husband back when he comforts me. Later, these memories fuel the guilt-laden loneliness that precedes a new cycle of apathy.
I understand the appeal of masochism: when your emotions are blank, physical pain is a blessing because it's reassuring to know you can still feel something.
Depression is mental paralysis.
