DEPRESSION HURTS

I have been afflicted with depression, chronic depression, since I was in my late teens.

(That's almost 50 years ago.)

Sometimes it's hardly present at all. I can do quite well, day to day. I can work creatively at a job. I can even blog.

Sometimes, though, it's very, very, very bad. Suicidally bad. I've never tried to kill myself. But I can understand how people could try, and succeed.

Often it's bad enough that it hurts, physically. My whole body hurts.

I've been physically and emotionally immobilized.

And I'm sure it has hurt my family.

Of course, I'm not alone in depression. One of the better known depressives was Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Britain during World War Two. He reportedly referred to it as a "black dog" (though at least one of his biographers claims Churchill never used the term). The matter never came to light, of course, when he was Conservative leader and PM. To have admitted something like that would have been political suicide, so strong were (and are) the biases against people with mental disabilities. But I have read there were many, many times when Churchill's condition was so bad — when he was so fearful and vulnerable — that he needed protection from the public eye. Family, friends, and colleagues provided that protection.

I haven't needed that kind of protection. Fortunately.

I have had medications which have helped; the quality of those medications has improved over the years. And I have had people to whom I could talk — like the family, friends, and colleagues who helped Churchill. But I have been terribly fearful and vulnerable.

But, even with help, there have been lots of times when life was very difficult.

This is harder to write than I had expected. So I'm going to quit, for now, right here.

But there is more; so very much more. And I will share, when I'm able to do that.