The Depression Thing

After a week of highs, this one-legged dog is feeling dispirited. I am on the floor, so to speak. This is the thing with depression.

My problem with depression has always been a nagging suspicion it isn't real: how can someone as positive me be depressed? How can someone like me who has dragged himself up at every step and surprised himself, be melancholy? But that's the game for you.

But when the debilitating lows appear, I feel powerless. Weird thing: I feel almost embarrassed by the episodes.

When I lost my job with the federal government in 2006 the therapy suddenly ended and I couldn't afford a private one. So that was that. Of course I couldn't get into the habit of taking Paxil and it has been over two years since I stopped the medication. My drawer is a make-shift casket for pharmaceuticals: unfilled prescriptions and packets of Paxil mixed in with an almost-empty bottle of Valium or something like it.

It is, in a sense, remarkable that this one-legged dog is pretty much free of vices - no smoking, no drugs, no drinking. Just a boring old fart. Scratch that - just a boring, depressed old fart.