What Does Depression...Mean? (How Does/Should/Can One Think About It Non-Transactionally?)

[Douggins (Douglas Duff)]

I am not the right fella to respond but I do feel the need to respond. Your presentation of the issue, your presence on this strangely relational site and your open-hearted questioning has me disliking the “transactional” “heart” icon for what it cannot do, which is share an embrace, allow you to see the reddening of my face with a certain emotional response, allow eye contact to do better work of “speaking” than the following typed words.
Maybe for now, before I carry on too far in some strange direction (and as you say… I am at work and I should probably be doing something…different ), I will allow you a semi-transactional prescription of your own supply of medicinal wordings:

@AndrewField81

To you, fellow cosmonauts my dear Andrew, I say, enjoy where you are, especially if you have a modicum of peace and silence (what this room has for me right now, even though it does not stop shaking). Value meaningful, quality time, with yourself or others.

@AndrewField81

Depression affects how I see myself, others and the world - there is a tendency to feel more cynical, or bitter, or constricted in a way, all of which I find ridiculous in many ways, but which still operates at some level, influencing my worldview.

@AndrewField81

I do not really think we are ultimately separate or alone, so favor dialogue and respectful disclosing over secretiveness and uncommunicativeness

@AndrewField81

… I was noticing people in a way I thought, felt or hoped Whitman might have experienced in terms of seeing - something beautiful about each stranger’s dignity, something incommensurable, unreplaceable, their full unique person, living story, full unthrottled self - where aesthetics and ethics really and actually meet.

@AndrewField81

I feel certain that reality is far more malleable and rich and strange than we give it credit for, not to mention that our relationship to reality seems so utterly intertwined and connected, participatory in the largest sense. I mean by this that when I was sick, the world was sick. When I am happy, the world is happy. I think Wittgenstein said something along these lines. So who I am is in many ways how I think about myself, and how I think about myself is based in large part on the experiences I’ve had that contribute to my interior world, my soul.

@AndrewField81

“I am really not who I think I am.”