Depression

A side of me wanna be free.
A side of me wanna stay a prisoner

So this is a piece I have been working on for some time now as a cathartic practice, a coping mechanism if you will.  Some things have been quite rough for me the past few months and after some thought I decided it would be helpful to me if I began using visual representations of how I see things like depression and anxiety affecting people.
I intend to do a series of pictures for various aspects of depression as well as mental illnesses and disorders. 

Now about this piece itself:
When I think of depression, one of my first thoughts of it as a physical manifestation is that of a shadow.  We always have a shadow in any given light source and for many depression is always there behind us, attached to us and emanating from us.  As a shadow, depression spreads out from us and distorts itself until it is some ominous presence but one we don't fear but rather just acknowledge because it is a part of us; we've become used to seeing it everywhere we look. 

I wanted there to be two 'faces' to the shadow to capture more than one faucet of depression.  Depression in many isn't just about sadness but also a self loathing because the person feels they have no right to be sad or blame themselves for not being able to overcome it.  They acknowledge that there are others out there that are probable suffering worse and therefore look down on themselves for feeling depressed, trivializing their own feelings and making they own struggles seem less legitimate to themselves in the 'grand scheme of things.' Some have even described this aspect as a passive-aggressive to full on aggressive dialogue in their head mocking them in their daily routine while suffering from depression, essentially turning a part of themselves into their own personal bully.  So </span>I wanted one head to represent the more bullying aspect of depression, personifying it as something that almost takes pleasure in the depressed persons suffering.
And I wanted another shadow that represented a sad, almost sympathetic side of depression.  This is the side that reasons it is okay to stay depressed, that assures you things are worse than even you think they are and that it would be best to not face the world; the part of you that tells you to not bother getting up in the morning because it will only makes things worse and that you will feel better if you do nothing at all, the part of you that makes staying asleep all day and missing out on things that matter to you seem so inviting.

Obviously there is much more to depression than these shadows, which I hope to touch more upon in future projects and works.  It is my hope that creating these pieces will help others understand how depression and other struggles affect a person.  I ask that you keep in mind that not everyone experiences depression the same way, nor will they experience the exact same things that I have.  This is my own personal interpretation, the things I have experienced.