"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me."
Walt Whitman (1819-92)
"When I look back now over my life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not take, my heart is like to break."
Akhenaton (d. c.1354 BC)
And now, the current weather, from some random person we pulled off the street:
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Hand
Thought I'd drop a quick note for posterity, even though I really don't feel anything like writing.
I'm still struggling with the depressive episode I mentioned several weeks ago, but it's far worse.
It has enveloped my life like a piece of smothering heavy black velvet. Everything is seen through it's shadow. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is humorous.
Humor and wit are food and water to me, and I'm starving.
I told the doctor that my depression was so very different from the grief I had felt over the loss of the pet in my previous post (I am over the grief btw.) He asked me how it was different.
Well, I said, like apples and cash registers. Completely totally different feelings. The grief was tied to an event. The depression was more generalized.
He asked me if the depression was tied to anything, if there was anything in particular I thought about. I said yes.
What is it tied to, he asked.
The future, I said.
What do you see in your future, he asked.
"A place I don't want to go."
He made a note or two. "I know that sounded suicidal," I said. "But at the moment I'm safe. As a matter of fact, I have a friend waiting for me in the lobby."
Which, uh, as usual I jumped into the middle of the story first, so let me give you the Reader's Digest version of the beginning. A friend of mine named Trish spotted last Tuesday at a meeting that I was doing badly. That's hard to do since I really try to hide my mood states well. I can be cracking jokes and laughing and inside I am weeping.
Since then she has called or emailed me almost every day to check up on me. When I got to the doctor's office, she was waiting in the reception area for me. When it turned out that it was gpoing to be an hour until I could see the doc, she took me to a McDonalds for a Coke and cookies, then waited with me in the waiting room.
Afterwards, we dropped by her house to feed her cats and she showed me the most wonderful thing. She reached into a closet and pulled out an incredible sketch of a young girl she had done. I was awed by her talent, and I think she doesn't really let people know about it. She also told me she used to be a ballerina, which I thought was neat.
We got back in her car, and she called another friend and cancelled her plans for the evening. then we went to the library and had a seat in the back, and just talked for hours, until she had to go home to go to bed for work. By the time I got home, it wasn't too long until my wife got off work, so I wasn't sitting along in an empty dark house all night.
That could have had a very bad outcome, and Trish knew that.
Friends are, I think, the most valuable treasure on Earth.
It’s the friends you can call up at four a.m. that matter. --Marlene Dietrich, German movie actress (1901 - 1992)
