Traveling Companion

Not even I should go a year between posts, so I figured I'd check in, and with no topic in mind, just put down what's on said mind.

My depression is visiting me this week, but he's different than he has been in the past.  It seems like he's matured and mellowed along with me.  When he first sunk his teeth into me in earnest, some eighteen years ago, it was a savage, hard-edged thing.  It knocked me flat.  As I was able, with the help of doctors at least somewhat versed in brain chemistry, to control him, the edge came off, he donned softer clothing, but whenever he drew closer, he was still hard underneath the skin, and took me down for the count at least once.  The medical help?  The ignorant think it's some kind of chemical escape mechanism; as one uninformed, tactless nursing undergraduate called it, a "happy pill."  Those who really know, know better.  It's no such thing. I take my meds, and I still have clinical depression... but I'm alive.  That's the difference.  In the throes of depression, one is spiraling down a black hole with no end, and no desire to stop descending.  The medicine simply nails up a sturdy floor to stand on to stop the descent.  That floor may be lower than the surrounding ground, and it's made of rough-hewn planks, not carpeted in flowers and unicorns, but it is a floor, a limit to further downward movement.  And that's enough, and thank God for it.

Anyway, I've grown and learned, and I have people who depend on me.  My children get my mind out of myself, and they're worth it.  I had my chances to be more than a mediocrity, but now is the time to be a springboard to their dreams, and it's a joyful thing to do so.  Now, thanks mostly to the much-maligned doctor-prescribed SSRI in residence in my bloodstream, rather than being a savage primate riding piggyback, screeching in my ear, depression is more of a companion walking a few paces behind silently in a hooded robe.  (If I were a man of consequence, perhaps he'd be the slave standing behind me in the chariot as it passed beneath Roman arches in the triumphal parade, whispering "Remember thou art mortal.")  I'd love to be altogether free of depression's company, but that's probably not in the cards, and I can tolerate it.

This week, he's pulled up abreast of me.  Not on my back, saying dark things to me from behind gritted teeth, but keeping pace.  But where before his mutterings were a danger to me, this week, they're causing me to withdraw from people, all people except for family and the closest friends.  It's not falling down a hole, but left unchecked, withdrawal into one's self isn't much better.  But I think this is an episode that won't last; he'll drop back again and take his designated place behind me in our pathetic two-man parade.