Swamped: On Depression and Vision

“Swamped” cracks open my experience of depression by exploring how a specific place—a swamp—acted on me to bring social and emotional injuries, but also modes of seeing that ultimately moved me out of the depression, to the fore. In writing from this specific place, I build on moments in which something—a desire for beauty, the luminosity of blue, the dullness of gray, the vibrancy of lichen, and the slippage between seeing and unseeing—moved into view. These moments were often minute and small and could seem as if nothing had happened, but in each one something impinged, and something congealed released itself into vision and movement. In placing these moments in loose sequence, I do not only seek to clarify how and why vision matters to me but also to form a method for seeing from which I might be able to draw should the depression strike again. In depression, rational understanding often runs out, pushing memories and associations to the fore. The creation of this piece has been inspired by the associative-autobiographical writing developed by Maggie Nelson and Wayne Koestenbaum, as well as the image-bound, descriptive approach encouraged by Kathleen Stewart.