I've come to realise that doing something for someone else is very helpful in overcoming feelings of depression, for a little while at least. This is perhaps because helping is, by definition, movement and love, the two things we feel most distant from when weโre depressed.
I love telling people that I'm from an oasis between the desert and the mountains and how it mirrors my inner geological landscape. I know of the desolate desert and its unforgiving sandstorms, the cold mountains and their isolating steepness, and a hope in the shape of a well.
At the end of loneliness lies the terrible suspicion that it is deserved, Pontius Pilate washing his hands and realizing they would never feel clean again.