I've experienced a bout of depression over the last week. Crept up on me until I felt like curling up into a little ball and never getting up again. Today's been better.
I've dealt with severe emotional peaks and troughs most of my life. Are they the product of some harsh event or series of events in my distant toddlerhood or inherited from my parents? Dad was on mood stabilising pills for much of his life.
Tell the truth, after years of going to therapists, even qualifying as one, I have no answers. I've studied shamanism, worked to enhance my psychic abilities and even spent a few years as a borderline schizophrenic - the fact that I continually questioned the voices and archetypes I saw during that time kept me just on the right side of the line! - but still no joy.
I get them less often now and the severity has been tempered but - Goddamnit! - I would have thought all the work I've put into understanding and walking away from that kind of internalised madness would have born more results.
Maybe it's part of being an artist. I guess if we didn't have some axe to grind we wouldn't bother or continue making art. It's not always a smooth ride commenting on 'Life' . . . and only an artist would think of looking at their lot in life as difficult because their audience isn't big enough or their art is going through a dry patch.
I'm also not unaware of the state of things in many parts of the world and I find them horrifying. Beheading and burning people alive is so old school it's impact is much greater than when it was more or less the norm.
And now, after those last 'happy' musings, I've decided to wave goodby to my recent depression and remember - yet again - that I won the lottery when I was born in the USA during the '50's and really have very little to ever be down about.