Summer Blues

Just as things were getting better, the black dog has returned.  It’s unpleasant being depressed, unreasonable in its timing.  I have dealt with depression all my life.  I can remember at the age of five, standing at the kitchen table of my grandmother’s, waiting for the therapeutic administration of prune juice to relieve a terribly prolonged case of constipation.  I can recall the feeling of complete detachment, as though I were watching myself from an angelic perspective.   I recognized the feeling as markedly different and queer, that I lacked the vim and vigor I had had very recently.

As an adolescent I would notice that there would be times in which all my mental faculties seemed to slow to a crawl.  There’d be perceivable breaks in my line of speech as I . . . grasped the fogy recesses of my mind for a word.  I’d become taciturn and moody, and often weepy, especially in the mornings.  I’d get anxious, so intensely that I’d literally be sick, and would miss school.  A lot of school, so much that I’d need a doctor’s note with everyday out, so much that there had to have been an unsaid understanding with my teachers.

Conversely, I would feel the complete—nay I shouldn’t say—polar opposite, where I would have lightning-quick recall, drawing anything from my memory at will, like an SSD.  I’d be jolly and talkative and feel riotously hilarious.  On day in law class, we were going over the answers to a quiz. We only had before us our scantrons, with the series of pencil marks representing answers and the machine graded score; on mine, the machine scrawled in green, dotted font: 75/75 100%.  Despite only the teacher having the written questions, I knew not only what she was going to say, but also all the lettered answers both correct and wrong.  It felt surreal mouthing along with what she was saying, like I was lipsyncing to the worst lyrics every written.  This, I came to realize, is the wonderful top of Ferris wheel.  I was then above the world and it was great, but the tradeoff is that I have to spend time at the bottom as well.  It is cyclical in nature. 

My deepest depths of depression came when I was out of the structure of secondary schooling.  In high school I would have a little laugh about being immune to cabin fever if I didn’t go out of the house Saturday or Sunday.  Depressed in my gap year, I’d spend week without leaving the house.  If I didn’t go to the library or hang out with my true best friend (fraternal love forever DO’B!), I didn’t go out.  How mossy the stopped stone becomes. 

When I am depressed, as I am now, I am impervious to boredom.  This is a great time for studious analysis of dry cinema (I should put “Watch Lawrence of Arabia on my To-do List).   My brain chemistry must really change, as I can sleep for hours on end, getting up from a long nap only to go back for another—without getting the headachy, drowsy oversleep feeling I get when I’m not depressed.  Turning the AC down, pulling the curtains, and creating white noise with box fans makes for the best anytime sleep that is—bar none—the greatest, womb-like comfort I’ve ever felt.

But this isn’t a solution; it’s a momentum killer to life’s progress.  And it doesn’t guarantee that the depression won’t get worse, that I won’t feel the ennui, the despair and the utter loneliness that Robin Williams must have felt at the end.  Recognizing this, I have made an appointment with my psychiatrist to discuss my chemical therapy, and I am getting out to Five Seasons and giving myself, through exerce, regular brain baths of endorphins.  Today I got up at eight to do Laurie’s group at 9:30, and by eleven I felt energized, had over 1,000 calories deposited in the weight loss bank, and most importantly, I FELT HAPPY!  Everyone’s depression is as different as the therapies that help them, but I can tell you that my road to Wellville is paved with activity and exercise.  I guess all roads do lead to Five Seasons!