You could have spared her, oh but no, messiahs need people dying in their name.

As I’ve muddled my way through this current depression, there have been some surprises. Some good, some bad.

This one has been a hard one, with a quality I’ve not experienced before. That’s not to say it’s been the worst or the deepest in which I’ve ever found myself; as bad as things get, I can always think back to that darkest of times, years ago, and rest confident in the fact that, thank god, things have never gotten that bad again. It’s good to have barometers against which to measure my “progress,” as it were. (Another such barometer I’ve learned to observe is the extent to which I am—or more accurately am not—looking forward to things that I “should” be looking forward to.)

An unexpectedly bad surprise has come in the form of how close to the surface my emotions have resided lately. It’s hard to feel you’re acting rationally or coherently when driven by such tempestuous forces.

However, an unexpectedly good surprise, on which I’ve been focusing optimistically, is the extent to which people have been there for me in ways I never would have or could have expected. My relationships continue to evolve in often surprising ways, the most striking example of which has to be the current state of my relationship with my parents.

I’ve realized that in the last few weeks, lines of communication have opened between my parents and me that did not exist previously. And it’s been an amazing (an unexpected) comfort to suddenly be able to talk to them about things that, for one reason or another, I never felt able to talk to them about before. Clearly, I was not giving them enough credit. And in the process, I was denying myself a source of comfort that is available from no other source. For in speaking with them about difficult and personal things, I’ve in turn learned a hell of a lot about where I come from. And suddenly, I feel a little more normal; a little less alone and a little less like the proverbial black sheep.

I have never felt closer to my father (and we’ve always been close) or appreciated him more than I do now.

And to think, if I hadn’t gone through this, I never would have known that. Talk about a silver lining. And what’s more, I’m seeing that observing me going through my own trials, and attempting to deal with them actively in ways that no one in my family has ever tried to deal with them before, actually seems to be helping those members of my family who may be prone to similar things. And that actually makes me feel really good. Finally bringing my “issues” out into the open within my family is probably the best thing I ever could have done, not just for me, but also for them. Seriously. And suddenly, all the suffering almost seems, I don’t know, worth it. In a way.