Depletion occurs when you give too much of yourself away. When people take too much. When you give other people too much  power over you, and when you are around people who drain you, don’t know you, are self-absorbed, angry, narcissistic. When you deny the voices inside of you that want to create, tell your story.

Depletion feels awful. I’ve come to see it as something like oil or water draining out of a tank until it’s empty. You have to fill the tank up, all the time. With people who support you. Who don’t take things from you. With people who care about you and know you. Or by creative experience. Or the satisfaction that comes with challenge and growth. Love fills the tank pretty well. Work you love. The natural world. Animals sometimes.

I am becoming conscious of depletion. Of fighting people or things that deplete me. And finding things that fill me up.