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Dueling with Depression: ignore the forest

Dueling with Depression: ignore the forest

We’ve all heard the weary cliché that some of us can’t see the forest for the trees. I’m the opposite; I can’t see the trees for the forest.

Back in my closeted days as a teenager, I would take long hikes through the Rocky Mountains nearly every weekend. I lived in the small mountain town of Divide, and my backyard consisted of the almost 6000 acres encompassing Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.

As an isolated gay kid with depression cleaving away at my mind, getting lost in the woods was my coping mechanism. The forest was my terse respite.

But I never paid a lot of individual attention to the trees I walked past. Rather, I would sit on the summit of a high hill overlooking a valley and chew contently on homemade bologna sandwiches with copious amounts of mustard.

For hours I would gaze at large clusters of aspens and pine trees burning bright green in the warm sunlight. Then I would close my eyes and let my thoughts hike ahead of me, meandering around a herd of elk in the valley before floating high into a cobalt blue sky, lightly touched with several brush strokes of clouds. Where did all these trees come from? Why is there a forest instead of just prairie grass? Do trees have a choice in being trees?

My head has always been stuck in the clouds, examining the big picture while missing the particulars.

I’ve proofread articles 100 times before submitting them to this very publication, only for my editor to catch obvious tyyypos. My thoughts are always working on how each sentence fits together, like pieces of a greater puzzle that must be positioned and arranged and placed properly to cultivate an alluring landscape in the mind.

And when I get lost in my head, I find myself sitting alone on that hill overlooking the rolling hills and jagged peaks of my mental mayhem. Where does depression come from? Why do I have depression instead of being happy? Do I have a choice in being depressed?

It’s important to ask such questions, but the answers are rarely clear. Sometimes I want to burn the entire forest down and feel the heat of fire against my face, my lungs burning with smoke and ash.

But if I step closer, I discover I’ve been missing details that make up the whole of my life — details I take for granted, like the opportunity to spend my weekends as a kid hiking a 6000-acre national forest.

Whether you focus more on the trees or more on the forest, the duel with depression can’t be fought on a single front. For me, that means occasionally ignoring the forest.

Now when I hike, I take the time to feel the coarse bark of a Ponderosa Pine on the palms of my bare hands. I listen to aspen leaves clapping delicately in the crisp breeze. I close my eyes and focus on the tangy mustard applied copiously to my homemade sandwich.

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