Site is Temporarily Closed For Despairs OR .... Depression, This Week's Featured Full-Length Theatrical Release

This is the only warning that I will give. That written next is a bunch of self-pitying, disgustingly boring, wha-wha- poor-me gobbledeegook. I am not in search of sympathy. It is with the slim possibility that someday I might find this enlightening that I write this, and because I feel a lot of my faithful readers deserve an explanation why I have just blipped off the radar altogether. I apologize in advance for the drippy, pukingly gross form that the explanation takes. It’s just the only way I can write at this time. For new readers who may have stumbled here, oh please don’t bother. I used to be funny, honestly, but this is so not worth anyone’s time. I am sorry.

Depression is a real thing. Those people who have experienced its sticky little fingers know what I am talking about. Those who, when reading that, pictured a really, really bad day you had that one time, when everyone was mean to you and the copious tears you cried that could have filled a river and how upset you felt all the way until Friends came on that night, and even then you couldn't find the heart to smile at Ross’s droll little expressions, and how the feeling just dragged on and on until you finally got yourself together, kicked your butt into gear, shook it off and moved on- just trust me when I say, that is not depression.

People who have experienced depression, in all its dragging, exhausted glory, know that the first sign of depression is not a bad feeling, a sad feeling, or a mad feeling. The first sign of depression, in many of us, is no feeling at all. One day, the thing that outraged your sensibilities doesn’t even cause an eyebrow to rise. One day, the thing you were so passionate about, thought about and plotted about, and went to sleep thinking about, circles into one constant droning, and positively, impossibly tiring thought and then tumbles right out of your head while you fall into a nap. One day, a sight that would have moved you to tears you look at with eyes as dry as dust. You lose interest in things that once interested you. You find it hard to listen, because your mind keeps wandering- usually straight into the nearest corner where it curls up to sleep. You stop caring about the five pounds you gained over the summer, stop caring about painting your toenails, shaving your legs, or hell, bathing at all for that matter. Everything seems exhausting, everything seems far too much effort and the couch, or bed, or floor with a pillow, ok, no pillow needed… looks inviting, maybe I could just lay down and take a little, teensy nap, everything will be better if I can sleep…. that is the first tiptoe of depression.

No feeling. Hollowness. Numbness. It can be so gradual and casual, the way it strolls into your mind, that you never see it coming. It is so subtle that you don’t even realize what it is at first. You think you’re working too hard. You think you’re tired. You think you might be getting sick. A million other things can come to mind, especially if you are like me, and deep-down in your heart see your own depression as just another sickening example of your personal weakness and unworthiness. Other people you might feel empathy for, want to help, but you, yourself…. Ugh. You disgust you.

One day, it’s just this thing that has been here for awhile- can’t remember when it arrived, exactly, but oh hell, it’s too much effort to figure it out anyway. I just don’t care. That’s the big tip off that depression has stacked its suitcase in my closet and hung up its raincoat in my closet. I just don’t care.

By the time you realize that lying on the couch staring at the fabric two inches from your eyes with absolutely no thought in the last forty-five minutes… by the time you realize this might not be normal, it seems like it’s also too late. Because to get up, to go to a doctor, to seek help, is too much effort. Eh., you say to yourself, I maybe it’ll pass. I don’t care anyway. The tricksiest, nastiest thing about depression is the way it saps you to the point of nothingness. Everything, even the act of brushing your hair, seems so monumental, so pointless, and so likely to fail, that you take the easiest path- doing nothing at all. And the next time you think of it, you’ve been lying on the couch for hours instead of minutes. You can sort of see the edge of the cliff, way up there, but the idea of climbing out, it would make you laugh, if laughing didn’t take so much energy.

As I said in the beginning of this most barfy missive, I am not seeking sympathy. It’s just an explanation, probably stupid and meaningless to people who have been lucky enough to never know the bite of depression. The bite that carries no pain or sharpness…. but is instead a bite accompanied by an anesthetic that numbs, so you can watch the teeth sink deeper and feel nothing at all except a distant sort of bemusement- a way-off question…how did I get to this point?

To make a point, I do have some small piece of me that really, really doesn't want to see anyone else get here. So, if you relate to the nonsense I have been spewing here, if you see some of yourself in my pathetic description, before it consumes you, get help.

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Get some help.

You do not want to be me.

Now if you will excuse me, my couch is waiting, and the weave is indeed the most interesting thing I have looked at all day.