Sub Drop...or Excuse to Drop out?

She's never suffered from depression. She has a few friends who have and, quite frankly, she finds their wallowing in self pity irritating. She's always been of the opinion that you need to push yourself through it, or shut up about it. At least around her.

But now she wonders. She knows the score, how hours after their meetings she will freefall, droping into a zone where everything is still frustratingly the same as it ever was, and yet somehow different, as if you are looking at your own room in the mirror.

She wonders if these small slithers of feeling like this are what depression might really be like.

It takes a while, but she knows she'll come out of these moments. Hot mugs of Earl Grey, copious amounts of chocolate, a hot aromatic bath, a good bitchy gossip with her mates, her head down working with Hans Zimmers' The Last Samuri soundtrack playing in the background, and the joy of writing, will bring her out of her darkness.

There are occasions when she wonders if the highs are worth the lows. Of course these are always when she's feeling low, when she's looking in that mirror, where the lines and wrinkles of her own life are far too obvious.

A Dom friend once told her the way to get over the drop is not to fight it, but to accept it, live through it and wait for it to pass. And she does. And it does. It might take hours, but slowly she can feel her lips pull back into a grin again, can look back upon their night together and feel the fluttering softness in her chest as she recalls moments of pure bliss, can look away from the mirror and see what she really has and think she actually has it pretty damn good thank you very much.

She's lucky. She can bring herself through it. But part of her wonders what it would be like really be depressed, to be stuck in front of the mirror, unable to shake off its power. It's then she realises exactly how lucky she is.