Excerpts from "Elusive Butterfly" by Amy Hillgren Peterson


Each week I will upload exclusively for suite101.com a new chapter of my upcoming book. "Elusive Butterfly" is first a story of change: of coming of age in a turbulent society and uncertain household, of discovering that the euphoric "buzz" in my frontal lobe was "not, in fact, a sign that I was a genius at all, but a sign that something was terribly wrong," of metamorphosis and our universal fear of change, and of learning to love ritual and that "waking up with the same person every day for a lifetime is not a bad way to live a life."

Depression is a vile and violent sadness from which there is no living exit, only death. Even when suicide is not every day's obsession it still lingers in the corners. Options obscure and the only choices are to cry, to shout, to shut out, and to isolate. No one likes a depressive when the depression hits hard. Think about a time when you were despondent; it would have to be when someone died, or a real love left you. Something that changes your life forever in an instant. Close your eyes. Imagine you are there at the devastating beginning of the event, either when you learn of the death or when you first realize the lover is gone. Recall the anguish, the tears, the darkness. Take yourself to the next day, and the next, when reality sets; you are no longer crying hysterically, but your eyes sting with your tears' salt, your face itches from dried tears and your thoughts are through mud. Imagine feeling that moment every hour of every day. It isn't the sting of first loss, which, however painful, is one of the elements that makes us alive; the pain that cuts through but is all worth it because the love was there, the love was real, and you would have died rather than miss the love.

Depression is the day after. The stinging eyes and itchy face and grim life sentence that love is gone. Depression is everything gone. Not black or darkness but empty space where your soul used to live.

The copyright of the article Excerpts from "Elusive Butterfly" by Amy Hillgren Peterson in Mental Illness is owned by Amy Hillgren Peterson. Permission to republish Excerpts from "Elusive Butterfly" by Amy Hillgren Peterson in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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