This week, out and about with Leonard The Dog, my walking point has been the above question. Walking point means something I find myself chewing on as I let my feet free my mind. I walked and walked, albeit slowly. Dragging all that weight around can slow a person down. Anyway, I couldn’t walk away from this question, even when I’d more than had enough of it.

I can get preoccupied with weight. In simple terms it’s my main symptom. I am so heavy? My depression is without doubt heavy. How heavy? How come heavy is the same , but also different at different times?

This is where I’ve got to, for now anyway. My depression weighs what it weighs. It’s a sack of rocks, a mountainside, a dead star. I can’t weigh it. I know its weight but I can’t weigh it. I think though, its weight is stable. It weighs what it weighs, and it is how I carry it that changes. It weighs more than me, and always has. I think that has driven me crazy a lot of my life. The life and death battle with the sheer weight of my depression. How can it weigh more than me? But it does. And as I learn to give up trying to destroy it, or heal it, and just (just!) practice welcoming it, I find things are simpler. Though to paraphrase Mr. Cohen ‘That don’t make it light.’

Sometimes, I can carry the weight of myself with such a softness and ease. I have to say it really hasn’t been like that for a while. And, I must resist the temptation to chase it, or make myself wrong for not feeling it… like orgasms and tears, softness and ease comes and goes, and doesn’t respond well to pursuit.

Mostly, when I find myself this sort of crushed, I don’t move so much. I certainly don’t go out for two substantial walks a day. Blessed is the dog that loves me, and needs me to walk. So, I’m walking… and don’t even get me started about the mud!