In life we experience many types of feelings and undergo many adversities, as well as having great times. During the great times it is east to forget how bad things were or can be. We are lost in the euphoria that surrounds us. We have no fear of the future. Bad times become a myth. Good times become a certainty. Then, out of the pits of hell, despair, or what you will, comes the myth. The myth becomes the reality and we do not recognize it. It is foreign. Events like death, break ups invoke this demon of despair onto us. He accompanies us, when we wake up, when we are with our friends, or even when we are at church. He clings to us. Even though his invoker can only see this demon, the rest of our friends and family can see the effects. They offer what they have learned to be comfort. They say that they are sorry. They say that they will pray for you. They say that if there is anything you need, they will be there for you. After they say this, they go and continue to live their life the same, while you are stuck with your leach.
There is something to be said about how much another person can actually help you with despair and depression, but what I am addressing is the process by which comfort is given. When someone is suffering with depression and sadness, their heart feels like it is pumping anxiety through your veins. Every heart beat gives rise to new thoughts of pain. When you can cry for hours and feel no relief? Can you imagine what that is like? To live with such a burden, so that merely living is laborious. Your mind feeds you thoughts of misery. Your heart feels no love, no goodness. When someone is suffering that is what you are hoping to remedy. Remedying the most fundamental ideas of suffering. How can this happen and what I am supposed to do?
To answer those questions with, bad things happen to all of us and just get through it, we demote the persons feelings of helplessness to a point where those feelings of pain become more than a feeling. They become our soul. They fuel you. That is what happens when those who offer comfort in the traditional way. You don’t become a sharer of their burden, or of their pain. You merely give them a pat on the head, and just as fast as that sensation goes away, so does the comfort that was offered. And the dumbest thing I have ever heard when I suggested this was, “What else can you do?”. Asked not out of curiosity but out of defiance.
What you need to do is become someone that allows their pain to enter you. You must accept the fact that you must enter their mind frame and see the darkness. When you can see what they are facing, you can finally see what is to be done. Every situation demands different action, but you can only see what those are after you see their demon. If you want to help someone through their tragedy, you must use your time and energy actively. Simply saying nice words when someone is living in pain, or more correctly embodied pain, is no more helpful than putting a band-aid over a leg that is cut off. You absorb very little blood and do nothing to address the problem in front of you.
If you want to help you must hold them up, bear under their weight, their burden. And yes this is extremely tiring. You subject yourself to the worst parts that life has to offer, but you do so out of genuine love and pity. If you honestly desire that he or she should be relieved of, freed form, the demon of despair you will give your everything. No holding back. You can give a band-aid, or you can be a companion, but don’t think there is nothing to be done.
