“This November there seems to be nothing to say.” Anne Sexton
November
Tag: Depression
Caged in Spirit
“Once I was free; there was no cage that could bind me, and I had yet to create my box of numbness within my mind to be my silent protector.” J.D. Stroube
The Horse at the Bar
I met this horse at the bar today and he seemed to be in a very bad mood. He was on a break from taking tourists for rides through the Amish Countryside so I introduced myself and asked how he was doing.
He said; “Crap. It’s all crap. Living is crap. Life has no meaning. None. Nowhere to be found. Crap. Why doesn’t anybody realize this?” I was not surprised that he said this but surprised that he was so good with words.
So I asked; “Isn’t that from Ballad of a Shinigami by K-Ske Hasegawa?” He gave me a look like he was gonna bite my head off and replied; “Yeah, I read Manga, got a problem with that?”
I did not, and walked away scratching my head thinking that this is the coolest horse I’ve ever met and wondered if we could get together for lunch one day and talk more. It was just another normal day for me in Lancaster County, P.A.
So Many Raindrops
“I always like walking in the rain, so no one can see me crying.” Charlie Chaplin
Self-Isolation
“You have entered an abnormal, lonely, and unwelcome new world where you are nothing but an island of sadness.” Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
The Boredom and Sadness of Being
I’m going to be working on another project with my friend Alena Shminke but we’re having trouble figuring it out. This morning she suggested that we make it out of the boredom and sadness of being, which to me sounded perfect.
This is my first take on the theme, only today I had a fantastic day and wasn’t bored for a second. Fortunately I’m Bipolar so my mood changes as fast as a Cheetah on meth.
Scratched film texture added in ON1 Effects.
Tired
“It’s remarkable how we go on year after year, doing the same old things. We get tired and bored, and ask when they’ll come for us.” Yasunari Kawabata
Sink Or Swim
“There are too many ways to drown even if you don’t want to drown.” Charles Bukowski
Black Hole Mums
“I see a bright portion under the overhead light that shades into darkness and then into darker darkness and I can’t see beyond that.” Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Depression
“The courage it took to get out of bed each morning to face the same things over and over was enormous.” Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Finish
“We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed, and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting.” Charles Bukowski
The Great Depression Train
One night when we were teenagers my friend Jeff jumped in front of a train because he thought it was the best way to handle things at the time. A group of us had gone to the movies and as usual Jeff was out of control drunk. After another argument with his mother, a recovering alcoholic, he made his way to the tracks and waited.
Somehow he didn’t die but only broke his pelvis, and he continued to drink as heavily as before. He had his problems: two alcoholic parents, one who shot himself playing Russian roulette and a couple of missing fingers from a homemade bomb explosion, but which one caused such deep depression? Maybe all of them or maybe something else.
I lost touch with Jeff in my late twenties and watched other friends attempt to handle their depression in various ways. Most drank and did drugs as I did, and as time went by several ended up dead. After a breakup with his girlfriend my friend Cary tied a bayonet to his steering wheel and drove into a bridge. Others overdosed or shot themselves, and a former boss chose hanging.
Forty years later I still continue to struggle with depression and see many in the same boat. A photographer I used to follow, Don Graham, often wrote about his battle with Bipolar disorder and several months ago took his own life. He was in therapy and on several medications.
Depression is a fight we have with ourselves, completely created by our thoughts and we get stuck there. Antidepressants will only take you so far and often the side effects are unbearable. Therapy may help, but unless they’ve been there themselves it can seem like just words they learned from a course in college.
I think of depression like a train: Sometimes you can see it objectively, and despite all the smoke and noise you can distance yourself from it and get through the day. Other times its headed right for you, and like my friend Jeff, you stand there as it runs you over.
My favorite author, Charles Bukowski wrote: “Nobody can save you but yourself and you’re worth saving. It’s a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning then this is it. Think about it. Think about saving your self.”
