A Day In The Death

**************SPOILER WARNING**************

a bit late for some readers, sorry

The latest episode of Torchwood, A Day In The Death, was unexpected. After seeing Owen die at the end of the last episode, we find that he is up and about and as right as rain. Or is he? The whole story is dark, as are most episodes of Torchwood, but this one especially so. I found myself drawing comparisons with my recent trials and the struggle portrayed by Burn Gorman (Owen), whose performance was amazing and totally absorbing. For an episode where there wasn't much action, I was entranced. For Owen, a climactic event has caused a major shift in the way that the character sees his "life" and how he deals with events and with other people. He doesn't know what he can do to help himself get back to the way things were, to being comfortable with things again, to be normal.
He is numb, and unable to express how he feels, feeling that no one around him can understand what he is going through and so is unable to open up to anyone or to ask for their help. He even resents the help they do offer and, even more, resents that those around him are going about their own lives as if nothing has changed. But he knows a major change has taken place within him and is just unable to move forward, or find a way back to the person he was before.
Without intending to he comes across someone who is able to empathise with him, someone who is afraid of the dark too, and begins to reaffirm his reason for being, his purpose in life. He resolves his crisis, but still acknowledges that everything has changed and he has to change how he behaves to stop the rot setting in again in the future.
I've yet to make that revelation in my personal journey, but I hope to find my purpose very soon. I am examining my options and working out how I can achieve possible solutions that may see me through to the other side. It isn't going to be solved within 50 minutes, as it always is in Torchwood, not even in a two-parter, but I'll get there. I don't like to keep "dwelling" on my depression, or "harping on about it", but it is a major part of who I am at the moment and so needs to be talked about.

The "talking" helps me, it is a process that has proved effective for me in the past and I think it is underestimated the amount of good that writing things down, or talking to a stranger, can do to help. It's incredibly cathartic.

I also feel that not enough people talk about their depression in the public eye. Richard Hammond recently admitted to suffering from depression, Denise Welch has also talked about her own bouts of post-natal and clinical depression, and Judy Finnigan famously was off-air for months while suffering from post-natal depression. The more public faces that do discuss this dark affliction the more people will understand that it is not just feeling "a bit blue," and we won't just "snap out of it!"
I've just discovered a site which may help. depression.com which should offer some help, so I'm gonna go and read what they have to say.