Descent

Words and images by Caitlin Stark

CN: Depression

If one is sometimes happy and sometimes not then there must logically be transition points. For me, the transition from happy (or at least content) to down or panicky often only takes a couple of minutes. I can feel it setting in in ways I can’t describe.

These drawings were an attempt to communicate that feeling. Imagine yourself as the person in the images. Feel that first touch of something wrapping round your ankle – the instant dread as you know something is wrong.

The fight against it, perhaps desperate at first but at some point becoming half-hearted in the realisation of its futility. Experience every second of the pressure change.

Watch the pleasant place you were in before get gradually further and further away. In no time at all your world has changed beyond recognition.

You have felt it acutely, but those around you might have seen nothing at all. The surface of the water, all that anyone else can see, has barely changed.