There are Dementors in my Room

I wake up shivering. 

Instead of keeping me warm, my clothes feel like they are confining me; my covers, tying me down. Whatever the word “joy” means, I won’t ever feel it again. And then I hear something; asthmatic breathing coming from many different directions puts dread into my bones in the place where warmth should be.

I break out in a cold sweat as I see five or six hooded figures floating around my bed, their clammy, cruel, hands reaching out ominously to my head. 

I was watching the Prisoner of Azkaban a couple of nights ago, and I was struck by the scene where Harry first encountered the dementors. It really hit home for me this time around. Harry had just woken up from passing out and wondering why the dementors had affected him so badly while Ron was describing how he felt all of the joy leave the room.

I wondered aloud whether dementors were allegorical for depression. It made so much sense. When a dementor draws near, it ravages the soul. You feel cold, your breath starts to shorten. You feel claustrophobic and afraid. Your worst memories begin to surface, clawing at your psyche, making you all-too aware of your shortcomings. You believe so strongly that joy has never existed, nor will it ever exist in the future.

The past couple months for me have been a return to this dementor-filled room, this constant state of melancholy at best and crippling depression at worst. I can’t seem to escape it. It seems as if 2016 is going to have bookends of an extremely dark frame of mind for me, with this latter part of the year being the worst of it. I’ve hardly told a soul, but I’ve been seriously considering going through with getting medication for it because I genuinely feel at the end of my own ability to cope with it. Not that I believe medication is a bad thing, mind you, part of me is so relieved to have that as an option, but I do feel that I have nothing left to give to fight this thing off in my current state.

While reflecting as I was watching Azkaban, though, the scene where Harry was learning to cast a Patronus Charm really hit the feels. Having a sense in my head that dementors were pretty much physical manifestations of depression, it made the Patronus Charm so much more beautiful to me. Lupin was teaching Harry to fight the dementor with the happiest memories he could muster. It was the knowledge that joy had existed in the past that gave Harry a promise that joy could exist in the future, that this dementor would not be the end of him.

It was beautiful.

The dementors begin to press in all around me on my bed. My breathing is quick and shallow. The claustrophobia sets in my my mind and I can’t even think, let alone conjure up happy memories.

“Focus,” I can hear Lupin say, “think.”

I try to concentrate, and memories slowly start to form: me standing at the ocean; laughing at jokes; listening to good music; these memories are all good, but they aren’t powerful enough. The dementors are getting closer. One of them wraps their cold fingers around my throat and begins to heave it’s lungs. No, this can’t be it for me. More memories start to pour in: I’m yelling along to David Bowie’s verse in Under Pressure in a car; I’m sitting at the edge of the Grand Canyon playing Jenga; I’m drinking tea with new friends in China; the faces of the friends that have stood by me in the hardest times flashes in my head, as well as all of the moments of laughter and of life with them. 

The room fills with the brightest and purest light (and of course, being me, it’s in fox form). The dementors flee, and I’m left in my room with my memories, knowing that there is still joy to be found in the future. 

November 18, 2016November 27, 2016 by adamamanse 1 Comment