I’m Back and Out of the Black Hole

At least mostly.

Here I am again. I bet some of you thought I died, or at least stopped writing on Medium. Well, obviously neither one of those events came to pass.

Laying on the sofa for a couple of months is not the same as dying. It’s just a bout of my old enemy MDD, major depressive disorder. It visits me more often now that I am old(er) it seems.

One day I am minding my business, going along quite well in my lazy, retired, but interesting retirement, and WHAM, it hits me. But wait. It’s not really like that. I can feel it coming but usually choose to ignore it and carry on with my life. I think the monster is annoyed by this, surprised I’m still out of bed, so it hits me harder until I go down.

My first memory of being depressed is from when I was about 9. I don’t remember what kicked it off, but I remember laying in bed, crying pretty much continuously and telling my mom I was sick and couldn’t possibly go to school. She let me stay home a day, but after that it was back to school. I remember trying not to cry right there is class and sometimes failing.

Teachers and other students were always asking me what was wrong. I made up stuff. I couldn’t have said what was wrong even if I had been much older. I was just sad, I just couldn’t stop crying. Most maddeningly, I could not speak without crying.

I just read a book by Matt Haig that I first learned about from reading his articles here on Medium. It’s a good…