Categories: news-from-depressionland
Tags: depression, retreat, dentist, train ticket
Date: 16 September 2010 16:47:45
I have to make an apology. To those of you who read this blog (if there's anyone still here) yesterday's entry must have appeared to have come out of the blue after a couple of fairly chirpy entries about our Big Trip etc. The fact is that this depression has been building up ever since we got back from America, but I was too low to blog about it. Actually yesterday I was even more low but I felt desperate to express it in some way. I have had a few bright spots during the last couple of months but they have been so fleeting, no more than a few days of finding life tolerable or even slightly pleasant. To tell the truth, I feel now as if this particular depression has been going on for years, but then in the midst of depression one's memory is very distorted and tells one that things have never been anything but bad. If I listened to my feelings just now I would think I have been depressed continually a) for the past twenty years or b) continuously since 1972. Neither of which, I know objectively, is true.
On the other hand, during the brief periods of mental sunshine, I am convinced that I am now cured and that depression will never hit again. Which is equally untrue.
The facts on the ground, to sound like a newscaster, are that I have managed to contact two possible sources of counselling or psychotherapy, and booked myself a retreat this weekend, as well as buying my train tickets online and ringing up to book both my taxi from the station, and my return taxi on Sunday. All of which has to be better than yesterday. I just have to remember that while the retreat will undoubtedly make me feel better, it will not be a magic cure and nor will I return from it with a brilliant idea that will totally transform my life. Or with a poem I can enter into the poetry competition whose deadline has been extended. Although the latter is possible.
I have to tell myself that change comes slowly and that I can do little things every day to improve the immediate circumstances. Such as going down the road, which I did this afternoon, to buy some dental appliance sterilizing tablets. Which the dentist didn't have but has ordered for me, thus ensuring that I will have to make another trip down the road next week. Of such small things is sanity made.