Lost and Found
A symptom of depression is the overwhelming feeling to just disappear. Not die, necessarily, but to be unalive until it passes. It breaks my heart to see myself gone down to the worn-out place again. It’s like having amnesia and everyone around you is wanting you to be the person you were. It’s when nothing is just as important as everything.
What was challenging feels overwhelming; what was sad feels unbearable; what felt joyful feels pleasureless – or, at best, a fleeting drop of pleasure in an ocean of pain.
When people are sad they generally have an idea of why. Depression doesn’t always work like that. Sometimes people will be aware of what has triggered their depression, but sometimes it won’t be obvious. On paper, people with depression can look as though they have everything to be happy about – they can even believe that themselves – but depression doesn’t play by any rules.
While not everyone’s experience is the same, generally the world looks, feels, and is understood completely differently than before and after the episode. What was beautiful may look ugly, flat, or even sinister. The depressed person may believe loved ones, even their own children, are better off without them. Nothing seems comforting, pleasurable, or worth living for. There’s no apparent hope for things ever feeling better, and history is rewritten and experienced as confirmation that everything has always been miserable, and always will be.
When this reality shift happens, it’s difficult to remember or believe what seemed normal before the episode. What the person believes during the episode seems absolutely real, and anything that conflicts with it is as unbelievable. It’s being colorblind and constantly being told how colorful the world is.
For example, if the person is unable to feel love for a spouse, and someone reminds the person that he or she used to feel that love, the person may firmly believe he or she had been pretending to themselves and others—though at the time he or she really felt it. The person can’t remember feeling the love, and can’t feel it during the episode, and thus concludes he or she never felt it.
The same process happens with happiness and pleasure. Attempts to tell the person that he or she used to be happy, and will feel happy again, can cause the person to feel more misunderstood and isolated because he or she is convinced it’s not true.
Even if nothing was wrong before the episode, everything seems wrong when it descends. Suddenly, no one seems loving or lovable. Everything is inverse. Any activity takes many times more effort as if every movement requires displacing quicksand to make it.
Major depression feels like intense pain that can’t be identified in any particular part of the body. The most pleasant and comforting touch can feel painful to the point of tears. People seem far away—on the other side of a glass bubble. No one seems to understand or care, and people seem insincere. Depression is utterly isolating.
There is terrible shame about the actions depression dictates, such as not being able to engage with life. Everything seems meaningless, including previous accomplishments and what had given life meaning. Anything that had given the person a sense of value or self-esteem vanishes. These assets or accomplishments no longer matter, no longer seem genuine, or are overshadowed by negative self-images.
Anything that ever caused the person to feel shame, guilt, or regret grows to take up most of his or her psychic space. That and being in this state causes the person to feel irredeemably unlovable, and sure everyone has abandoned or will abandon him or her.
It’s difficult to describe all of this in a way that someone who’s never experienced it can make sense of it. I can’t emphasize enough that when this happens, what I am describing is absolutely the depressed person’s reality. The symptoms of depression exist on a spectrum. All of them are normal human experiences, but in depression, they’re intensified.
Depression is feeling like you’ve lost something but having no clue when or where you last had it. Then one day you realize what you’ve really lost is yourself, but, unfortunately, life doesn't come with a lost and found.
Chipotle Pepper & Hot Honey Chicken Flautas
INGREDIENTS
- 1½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs
- 3 tablespoons honey
- 1½ teaspoon onion powder
- 1½ teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 3- 4 chipotles from a can of chipotles in adobo, finely chopped, plus 2 tablespoons adobo sauce
- Juice of 2 limes
- 10 warmed flour tortillas
- 1(15-ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
- canola oil for frying
- Garnish: lettuce, cilantro, Pico de Gallo, and sour cream
INSTRUCTIONS
- Combine the chicken, honey, onion, garlic and onion powders, cumin, salt, chipotle chiles, and adobo sauce in a 5- to 8-quart slow cooker. Stir well. Cook for at least 3 hours and up to 5 hours on low. If it’s more convenient, you can let the slow cooker switch to warm after 5 hours. The dish will hold on warm for about another 3 hours before the chicken starts to become quite dry.
- Using two forks, coarsely shred the chicken in the sauce. Taste and add more salt or lime juice if necessary.
- Warm the tortillas by wrapping the stack of them in damp paper towels and microwaving them for a minute.
- Place about 2 tablespoons each of chicken filling and black beans in the middle of each tortilla. Roll the tortillas up tightly and place them seam-side down on a plate.
- Heat 1/4 cup of canola or vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Place 3 flautas (secured with toothpicks) in the pan, seam side down, and fry for about 1-2 minutes. Then, flip the flautas and fry for another 1-2 minutes until golden brown. Add the remaining oil to the pan as needed and repeat this process with the remaining flautas.
- Serve the flautas with your favorite toppings such as lettuce, cilantro, Pico de Gallo, and sour cream.
