Thus begins the opening portion of a multi-part “suite” wherein I write about my struggles with male depression.
Depression…This Maddening Darkness
The Overture:
Know When To Get Help
I’ve made a New Year’s Resolution, and I’m only three days late.
My New Year’s Resolution: I am going back to therapy. [Cue the Orchestral Fanfare!]
I have been miserable for a very long time. Years ago, it seems a thousand centuries ago, depression nearly drove me over the edge, and after years of denial, I finally went for help, and thought I was cured.
Well, no.
Over the years, little by little, bit by bit, I lost the ability to find joy in even the grandest of events, let alone the “little things in life”.
The following will reasons may be strange to those who don’t know me very well but I am serious when I say:
I no longer become a raving, orgasmic fool when seeing a Rolls Royce Silver Spur, Spirit, Shadow, Wraith II (Long Wheel-Base Shadow), Corniche, and Cloud, or a Bentley (1930s-1998, pre-Volkswagen ownership) S-Series, T-Series, Turbo R, Turbo RL, 1990s series Continental R, Eight, Mulsanne, Brooklands, and Arnage, on the road, or as I like to say, “in the wild”…as if I’m the motorcar equivalent of Marlin Perkins…
Oh, and I stopped caring about the length of my hair. For most of my life, I had long hair. Think of the late 1960s, Let-It-Be era John Lennon/Beatles hair. Or the Ramones. That was my hair style for many decades. I never wanted short hair. Even as the tiny child of an Air Force serviceman I refused to have my hair cut. I didn’t care, man, because that hair represented freedom, man!
I realized the hair actually represented a curtain, a way of hiding my face from the world. So, a few months ago, I bravely stood in front of the bathroom mirror and, all alone, recreated the opening sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. I sang “Hello, Vietnnnaaaaammm,” country twang and all, as the electric razor mowed away my scalp lawn.
There I was. Bald. No more streams of hair to hide me from the wicked world.
When my mom first saw me shorn of my beautiful locks she got scared because she thought I had Cancer. Her reaction made sense because years before, right around the same time of year, Cancer took my dad.
The darkness remains…
Now I struggle to get any joy from doing what used to make me happy: writing, painting, playing guitar, acting like a fool, hanging out with friends and family.
Friends and family…
Being a self-centered, depressed, son-of-a-bitch has made life difficult for those who are the closest to me, those who are still among the living, and who wish to be active and want actually want to live life.
“Outside the Wall”, by Pink Floyd really sums up the pain and misery felt by family and friends who are unable to help because they are not inside the depression.
“All alone, or in two’s, the one’s who really love you, walk up and down outside the wall…and after they’ve given you their all/some stagger and fall/after all because it’s not easy/banging your heart against/some mad bugger’s wall…” – Pink Floyd, The Wall
Over the years, I’ve become boring, and as the great Stanley K. (the grandest of all film-makers: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Barry Lyndon, Clockwork Orange, The Shining) said, “To be boring is the worst sin of all.
“Once I was a fool and clown
had made people laugh and frown
but now I am a bore
alone behind the stage door
with no audience to amuse
I sadly stare at the shiny bells
that dangle from my pointy shoes.” – John Moretz
[Truth be told, I’ve been a bore all my life but managed somehow to fool people into thinking I had a personality.]
Delightful poetry aside, I realize I must seek out professional help because this depression, this maddening darkness, is pushing me away from life, from people, from family, from friends.
Don’t be embarrassed to seek professional help.
Over time, I will write more about this journey…take care…
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