The Tea Cup

The Tea Cup

Or “how NBC's Hannibal's idea of the 'tea cup' made me understand something about my depression and my recovery”

Hi everybody, Mary here.

So, if you don't watch NBC's Hannibal, maybe you won't get it. But in one episode of season two, when ***SPOILER ALERT*** Abigail Hobbes “dies”, Hannibal and Will talk about it in Hannibal's office. ***END OF SPOILER ALERT*** Then, Hannibal tells Will the story of the tea cup. When a tea cup is let down and breaks on the ground, and only pieces are shattered on the floor, you just can't fix it, now that it's broken. You wish that you could turn back time to save it, to prevent it from falling down, but it's too late now.

And how is it related to depression, you might ask ? Well, it's very simple : sometimes, I (and, I think, other people do that too) think about who I was before my depression. You know, sometimes, my mom keeps bugging me with this image of a cheerful, outgoing, full of life, ray of sunhine of a girl that according to her, I used to be. But I've been depressed for the last five years now. The little girl is gone. She's dead, at the age of fourteen, killed by the harsh reality of making something with your life (I am working on that point now, thanks for asking, by the way).

And I am not going to cry about it anymore. I cried enough, you know. And you see, that tea cup ? It was my identity before my depression. It broke. The pieces are on the floor, scattered and it's impossible to reassemble them. People are walking on it and it hurts. It hurts SO BADLY.

But you know what ? You can't fix what has been broken beyond repair. The old tea cup you used to have ? It's unusable right now. You can't glue the pieces and hope that you can drink hot tea in this mess you now have. And even if you could fix this old tea cup, it would be so fragile, so vulnerable, so weak that it wouldn't even survive the first tea drop.

So, what do you do ? You just build another tea cup. I know that it's going to be hard, because the first tea cup, your first identity, you were given it by your family, your parents, your friends. You just had to glue sticks on them to make it more personal, more you. You were never asked to build your own tea cup. And now that it's broken by the events of life, you have to build it. Put your hands in the ceramic, forge the new shape you want to give to it, use brushes to paint it. You don't know how to build a tea cup, there is no guideline to do it. But you just do it, because you really like tea (and drinking it).

I know that the first tea cup you make will break down. And then, the second one, the third one too. Unless you're a genius at making a tea cup, it will take you time, and patience, and efforts, before you finally get the tea cup you've always wanted. You will try thousands of different tea cups, you will change them, have remissions, have relapses. And it will hurt, and you will be tired. Whine whine moan moan.

But you see, one day, when you have just the perfect tea cup, you'll see that your efforts have been worth it. You'll see the beauty of life, while sipping tea with your loved ones, an existence that you thought you would never see again, and the happiness will come at you. I PROMISE.

But until then ? Just do like me : keep making those tea cups. Drink your tea in usable ones that you can dump in the trash bin whenever you want before making a new one. Keep changing. Your life is not going to stay like that forever. Because now, it's time to give yourself the priority. Not to others.

Also, the most important : DON'T USE THE PIECES FROM THE OLD TEA CUP TO MAKE THE NEW ONE. The result will just don't work, be ugly or break. Start from new ! And ONLY new !

Okay, that's it for today ! I hope that you enjoyed this post and I will see you very soon with another one !

And as usual, our last word : KIDNEYS !