Hi folks,

When I was a kid, there used to be this programme with a guy called Jaques Cousteau. He would swim around in Coral reefs and take pictures of the strange fish and stuff.

Well, it has struck me that my years of depression have been a bit like that. For a start, everything is slower, and walking around does feel a bit like swimming through water. Then there is the silence, the seeking out isolation, walking on my own, people watching but never talking to anyone. It feels like you are in a silent world, a world that you're not part of any more. What I liked more than anything was wandering alone on holidays abroad, where I couldn't even speak the language, so that I couldn't get involved with anyone even if I wanted to.

Now, the weird thing is that this mode of being is not really so bad. Having been afraid of being alone all through young life, suddenly being alone is the only thing that works. It's all you can manage.

I'd like to know if others have experienced anything like this in depression, or at any time really, and if you found it oddly pleasurable as I did? Of course we are all different in the ways we experience the world, but there are some precedents in literature for my feeling - Albert Camus talked about this in his journals and in his novel 'The Outsider'.

Cheers, M.