On Depression and Stranded Jellyfish.

I find it difficult to describe to people what depression is like because it’s one of those things you have to feel in order to know. But today I remembered something.

When I lived on the coast of Northumberland back in the nineties I used to walk on the beach nearly every day, and occasionally I would see lots of round, flat things lying on the sand. They looked like reddish brown pancakes, and it didn’t take me long to work out that they were jellyfish which had been stranded when the tide ebbed. Sometimes they would be lying there in the hot sun, and I wondered whether they were dead or whether they would return to their normal conformation on the next rising tide and carry on with their lives.

I never did find out, of course, but it occurs to me that the state they were in when they were out of their natural habitat – baking in the sun and dry air and being quite unable to return to the sea of their own volition – amounts to a fitting parallel with the state of depression. I wonder whether anybody else has noticed that.