The Abyss: Exploring Depression Through a Narrative of the Self

This article explores particular processes, vulnerabilities, and difficulties of living with clinical depression. To do so, the author draws upon moments from his own narrative of self to highlight how his embodied illness story collides with different selves. In the showing, he attempts to evoke the ambiguities, ongoing struggles, and gendered nature of depression in ways that display how the past continues in the present and crafts the future. Finally, the author discusses the therapeutic implications of writing, telling, enacting, and witnessing stories within a political and cultural framework of narrative resources.