"Black dog" back again

A gap in posting. Can only mean one thing: depression.

Yeah, it happened again. My "black dog" as Churchill called it seems to like visiting in spring and summer. As is typical, it stems from something I did to myself and just wasn't aware I was doing it. Problems at home. Sadness. Fear. Loneliness. I have come to greet summer with fear and loathing.

I'd like to think I'm a decent writer. As such, I'd also like to think that I can communicate my thoughts in an effective manner. But anyone who knows me in real life, I mean really knows me, is aware of a contradistinction. When it comes to how I feel and what I am thinking, I seldom confide in others. Even those closest to me.

I see myself as a submarine. I'm deep beneath the water, somewhere remote, operating on total silence. Run silent, run deep, indeed. That often results in unpleasant surprises for those around me. They just plain don't know what's going on because I don't let them in on things.

That, I believe, is due to a cocktail of nature and experience. I come from a long line of men on both sides of the family who "run silent, run deep." I don't know how the women of the family ever put up with them. Sad truth I'm finding is: "not very well." That natural tendency became intermingled with my own grim experiences at the hands of other people. So the quiet one got quieter, the sad one got sadder.

This is the point in a bout of depression where I automatically compare myself to everyone else I know and invariably see myself as coming up short. At least by society's standards. After all, I have chosen paths and interests that are wholly unpalatable to society, not to mention even those closest to me. When you step so much outside "the norm," a natural consequence is alienation. Why the hell did I do that to myself? Short answer I suppose is that I like them. They inspire me and it perhaps is a copout but in the end you just can't help who you are. Despite that, what if it just seems to keep damaging you? Sure, drugs like alcohol (which has no bearing on my current situation, I am happy to report) will make you feel great. For a while.

Then they start killing you.

Is that what my interests are doing to me? Or does it have more to do with my deeply flawed self? Maybe it's depression. Maybe it's all of the above.

Speaking of drugs and society, I've been watching videos of talks given by Terence McKenna. I have never taken any form of hallucinogen so I don't necessarily endorse his stance on those drugs, but what he says about the lives we lead and reality itself rings true to me. I mentioned before that I don't feel that I measure up to society. I don't think that is an accident and it is actually indicative of weak-mindedness. Sickens me to admit it, but there it is.

In many ways, I have allowed myself to be tricked...and I just keep letting it happen. I'm not the only one landing somewhere on the spectrum of anxiety and that's no surprise. There is a lot of money to be made by keeping people in anxiety. McKenna talks about that and how our lives are pretty much an artifice. Scabs on open wounds but not of our own making.

I'll let you check him out for yourself:








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