Bleakness and useless longing

Actually, I was depressed before my disgust at liking Jane Eyre.  I’m sunk deep in a crippling melancholy at the moment.  It’s shaken my confidence in myself.  I’m wondering if perhaps it’s a form of grief.  Not over any tragedy, just a sudden awareness of lack, of great emptiness. 

Holidays are always turning points.  After the ski holiday in July I returned full of drive, feeling invincible.  I got up and started putting my house in order with manic ferocity.  And after that wedding in Kangaroo Valley I’ve come back feeling this sadness.  I caught the flu, as I always seem to do on holiday, and two weeks later I am still not recovered.  The brutal truth is, I just couldn’t be bothered recovering.  So my body doesn’t. 

Fragments of Leonard Cohen songs play over and over in my head, waking hours or sleeping.  I’m not sure which I avoid more: the sourceless bleakness, or the unattainable richness of those seductive little pieces of witchery.  Leonard Cohen songs, wishful but ridiculous nineteenth century romances. 

And then I feel so ashamed.  My longing is so common, so transparent, redundant.  God, if you saw my fantasy life you’d know I never once expected to worry about being common. 

I’m struggling with interpretation, but really I’m rather lost.  Is it that grief and purpose, or meaning, are dyadic?  Is it simply that the more richness you expect in your life, the bleaker your reality looks?  Or is there a valid need I’ve been repressing, the hunger for which manifests in this bleak longing? 

Why did this depression suddenly come on?  Is it unfinished business, or a form of immaturity I should have outgrown?  Is there any benefit in diving into that pain?  I will, of course.  Again.  And again. 

But somehow I wonder if the universe is laughing at me, a grown woman drowning in angst and wishing for the eye of some deep and beautiful troubled soul.