Explaining My Depression To My Mother Analysis

In the fourth chapter of Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak entitled All the Way Down, Palmer is addressing and discussing clinical depression and the discoveries he made during this time. Disconnection and mystery are both explicitly covered to accurately explain the run and feeling of depression for the individuals that have never experienced the disorder. One of the main ideas that is addressed is that one of the only ways to get out of depression is to use knowledge of the heart and the choices that lead to wholeness are expressive of personal truth rather than calculated and intended to achieve a goal.

From the first-time read through, the poem gives a basic understanding of the narrative: a daughter telling the audience about her mother’s struggles

Laurell K. Hamilton spoke in great words that, “there are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” Hamilton embodied a central state of mind of a person who is mentally ill. The wounds mentioned are those caused, and worsened, by traumatic events and public perception of a person with a mental illness. The women in the short stories that have been read embody an internal injury caused by an outward force. In “Story of an Hour”, “Rose for Emily”, and “Yellow Wallpaper” it is impactfully shown how traumatic life experiences can lead to and worsen mental illnesses.

Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half (2013) is a compilation of short personal occurrences that Brosh experienced in her life. This book takes on a unique format in that rather than just text, it is composed of short sentences and paragraphs combined with little drawings of the scenes described. Her frank language and juvenile drawing style allows all different types of readers access to the genuine heart that is portrayed during each snippet of time. While an enjoyable read solely for the depictions and sometimes-comic storytelling, the book also addresses very serious subjects such as depression and identity. Having been published in 2013, this book appeals to contemporary readers and it is necessary to analyze it in its historical context in order to understand its true significance. For many people, it is difficult to address serious concerns regarding mental health and this book makes it available in a form that is both casual and real. As opposed to medical journals or psychologists who will provide a scientific explanation, this publication provides people with a relatable experience that promotes comprehension rather than correct terminology. Ultimately, Hyperbole and a Half tells the story of a woman trying to cope with the difficulties and conundrums of everyday life, but its real significance cannot be understood without insight into the twenty-first century person struggling to understand and confront their own or another’s mental illness.

I rarely read the assigned readings in English 1A and expected to do the same for 1B’s course. However, when I received the daily checks back and got zero after zero I realized I had my work cut out for me. This class challenged me, for the first in my English studies I had to work hard to earn an acceptable grade. Our first essay however, I was not too thrilled to have to write about Michelle Boisseau’s “Self-Pity's Closet”. I felt that her work was already self explanatory; the title said everything about the poem that needed to be said. The beginning of Boisseau's poem starts off with a slur of emotional turmoil, “depression, loneliness, anger, shame, envy” (Boisseau l1).I did not like the writing style because it bluntly listed how the character felt at the time. I wanted to investigate the core of why she felt a certain way but instead I was handed her emotions. I felt the urge to expose the character as an over emotional train wreck who feed off of empathy. At one point in my analysis I wrote “The speaker's life is consumed by fear of what others may think of her. She constantly is searching for the answer which would lead to acceptance not only from others, but also within her own self”. I had not gained any sympathy for the character. I felt that if she wanted to gain acceptance from others she would first has to accept her own flaws and not sulk in misery. The purpose of the assignment was to create a response. However, I found myself analyzing Boisseau’s

Sylvia Plath, a successful confessional style poet, struggled throughout her life with issues revolving around her father’s death, unsuccessful and unfulfilling relationships with men, and her mental illnesses. Throughout her struggles, Plath wrote, sometimes writing as much as 10 drafts a day. Despite welcoming into the world two children, whom she loved dearly, Plath still felt unfulfilled by her duties as a housewife. As she wrote more poems, it became clear she was unhappy in her life and in the grips of a serious mental illness. Sylvia Plath’s writing is deeply influenced by her experience with mental illness and the death of her father in her early life.

Depression can really affect a person’s life. Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is about a teenage girl named Melinda. At the end of her 8th grade year Melinda is at a party and calls the cops. All of her friends hate her now, and so does everyone else. It’s her freshman year and she is alone. In Speak, Anderson demonstrates depression through her GPA, how she is always alone, and how she skips school.

Brosh’s first post on depression, “Adventures in Depression”, describes the grueling progression into apathy she experienced. She makes reference to the obscurity in cause of her depression by saying “Some people have a legitimate reason to feel depressed, but not me. I just woke up one day feeling sad and helpless for absolutely no reason.” Brosh goes on to counteract this, stating “It’s disappointing to feel sad for no reason. Sadness can be almost pleasantly indulgent when you have a way to justify it – you can listen to sad music and imagine yourself as the protagonist in a dramatic movie.” The oscillation Brosh presents by sharing her nonsensical depression and contrasting it with more typical sadness demonstrates how grave her situation is while presenting the audience with a humorous observation to laugh at. Brosh has no source to try and end the depression she is feeling, since there is no particularly valid reason she began to feel it. This predicament leaves Brosh rather powerless, causing her struggle to be arduous and long. She describes her attempts to snap herself out of depression by being self-deprecating, a process that backfires. Brosh claims “The self-loathing and shame had ceased to be even slightly productive, but it was too late to go back at that point, so I just kept going. I followed myself around like a bully, narrating my thoughts and actions with a constant stream of abuse.” Despite the harshness of this behavior, Brosh creates humor in the way

The poem Suicide Note, written by Janice Mirikitani (1987), talks about a young lady, who has studied in an Asian-American female college. The lady, unfortunately, committed suicide by jumping through her dormitory’s window. She left behind a note, citing reasons that led to her actions. After a critical analysis of the note, her parents were held responsible for her actions; they were pressurizing her to perform better in her exams. The poem, thus, describes the real feelings and the emotions of this young lady, who believes that committing suicide is the only option left to please her parents and to escape the enormous pressure placed on her. The persona uses voice in the poem to bring our attention to the sufferings she was going through, and that led to the devastating event. Voice in poetry is the strong words of a line, stanza or a page that creates a relationship between the audience and the persona. Voice can, therefore, be categorized as imagery, patterns of sounds created, rhythm, tone, and diction (Gahern 166). The following is a description of how the voice in Mirikitani’s suicide note helps the reader understand the persona’s reasoning.

“A pen is mightier than a sword.” Looks could oppose the aspect of one’s power. Power, in this case, lies within the insightful state of the mind of one’s well-being. Being said, each individual’s mind runs on a different perspective and often battles between optimistic thinking and depression. Susan Sontag draws an inspiring argument that the state of illness is not directly physical, but rather mental by applying the use of metaphors, elaborative explanations, and applying own references and experiences to create an illusion on mental illness.

“Mom, why do I feel like this?” He asked his mother one night before going to sleep. His mother looked at him with not only love in her eyes but sadness as well. As if she could understand the reason why.

The Oscar-nominated documentary “Waste Land” leads a controversial issue related to depression and the treatments of depression. The question that stems from the controversy is does the use of art therapy actually cope with the symptoms of depression. An artist by the name of Vik Muniz contends to the idea that art therapy is considered a coping method for depression, and helps with the effects of depression. The individuals within the documentary have a background of poverty, and with poverty comes depression, but that does not stop them from their everyday tasks. The individuals spoken about throughout the documentary, have a work ethic that will leave you speechless. Although, when the issue of depression is brought upon others, most

are happy when they achieve something or saddened when they fail a test or lose

I was always awkward sexually, I don’t mean awkward in the sense of performing coitus but rather everything else. During sex I rather enjoy myself as any young man would, but before the act and after It where the awkwardness kicks In, Is where I find myself loathing the world and the person I am about to, or have recently just fucked. Usually young men enjoy the chase and thrill of courting. My best friend prefers this to sex itself, he believes that “It is a canvas in which only the best artists are capable of painting on”. In some ways Intend to agree with him and then reality kicks in and I remember that people are disgusting creatures, before, during (especially during) and after sex.

The term depression is widely misused in today’s society. All human beings experience periods in life where they are sad for a relatively short period of time, which is considered normal. Those who experience sadness for extended periods may be suffering from depression. Two terms used to reference the classifications of depression, are Major Depressive Disorder, and Dysthymia. Individual diagnosis of these classifications is dependent on the length of time, and severity of symptoms experienced by the individual. The causes for these depressive states can be due to genetics or the insufficient production of neurotransmitters, which provide the brain with the data necessary to regulate one's psychological well being. Two examples