Why am I here? Well, midway through life's journey, I found myself in a dark wood.... In his dark wood, Dante found Virgil and went to Hell. Me, I stumbled across Therese's blog. It made me angry at first. She's young, attractive, verbal, a success-- what in blazes can she know about depression? But during a slow time at work (far worse, of course, than a time of crisis and emergency), I surfed through her postings and started to trust in her authenticity. I don't share her religion, but I came to appreciate what it had done for her. And I started to like her. Grrrr. Despite the glossy blonde mane and outwardly together life.

So I guess I bought the brand name. I occasionally posted on the depression board here, so I see a few familiar names, including at least one gentle and wise soul. I probably won't post here as much as some of you-- my regular job is a normal 40-hour gig, while I am trying to start a publishing company, so I spend many of my off-hours doing the myriad things that enterprise requires. For a while, I resolved not to undertake this activity until I had my head screwed on str8, but since that is highly unlikely to ever happen to a satisfactory resolution, I figured I'd better get busy living. No devil's plaything here!

My depression history in a nutshell-- I fell into the black hole while a teenager in the late 60s, when depression was, by most, considered to be a character defect. It didn't reach its full, acrid flower until I had flunked out of college and tried twice to commit suicide. I've been medicated, analyzed, counseled, and therapied-- Prozac, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Freud, Adler, Jung, and Beck. My last therapy round ended two months ago-- the judges at ringside called it a draw. Almost all of my therapies have taught me something about me and about life, but none have reached down deep enough to scratch the germinal itch. These days, I use meditation, not to scratch the itch, but to observe it dispassionately, just the way that the discipline teaches one to observe a physical itch without breaking focus to scratch it.

I'm a man, which means at least two things-- I have a Y chromosome, and I am far more inclined to try and help people in specific, targeted ways than to express general empathy. I may try and go against that paradigm, but more likely, what it means is that, when I make a concrete suggestion in a guy-like way, it is my means of expressing love.

I should have mentioned in religion above that I actually am a proud member of the First Apostolic Baptized Church of Jesus Christ in Houston, and am in fact its only caucasian member. Some 15 years ago, when I was in a horrible place in my own life, I had the blessed good fortune to be able to lend them a few hours of my time and a small bit of my legal training to assist in a situation. The elders asked if I would accept a river baptism, and I did. They thought I did them a favor, but I know it was the other way around, because the work saved my life. I live a thousand miles away now and can only drop in 1-2x/year. Some of the elders have since passed on, but I know I can count on a lovely welcome and a chance to come a little closer to that Guy in the Sky that I'm not at all sure exists. So religion is complicated for me.

Still reading? There may not be any cure for your masochism.

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