#I just read an essay about Alice in wonderland written in 1985 and it’s all I can think about

[faewrenbird]

Nah, I get it. On the surface, the joke is nonsensical. How could a description of depression possibly relate to an image of sunlight, bright colors, rainbows, and happy dolphins?

Perhaps the absurdist humor is the point. It’s got a touch of nihilism, some irony, some sense of 90’s color-saturated nostalgia. The combination of words and image is meaningless, which itself has meaning because depression is the state of finding everything meaningless. It’s the Alice in Wonderland effect of highlighting the meaningless to inversely highlight what we define as meaningful.

Or perhaps the chosen image is intentional. The still-frame but pixelated image of manufactured happiness. Perhaps it represents the face that those struggling with chronic depression often wear to convince themselves and others that they’re fine.

Whatever it is, intentional or not, meaningless or not, it touches us. The reblogs are full of people using tags that express being able to relate to the image. There’s solidarity found here.