Let It Snow

This is just going to be babbling, so ignore it if you choose. The snow that came up the east coast on Wednesday into Thursday was joined by some unpredicted snow over Thursday night. That meant I had more snow than I had counted on to clean off my car this morning. And what this has all led me to is the conclusion that the primary reason for my isolation and being a hermit is not indeed because of my depression, but because of the damn weather. There is very little incentive to go out in frigid weather, freezing one’s fingers off trying to clear snow from a car, just to go run errands. With the miracle of the internet, one can easily stay home and have everything delivered.

Ahem, this is pure sophistry. I have workshops and physical therapy to attend to. I must go to the bank on occasion. And there is church, though it is not quite as attractive now that the labyrinth is under enough snow that its trail is harder to discern. The woe is caused by the misery of getting to all these places after the carefree summer. It’s like going to a very strict boarding school after a wild vacation. It’s like having to eat liver cooked to death with onions and mushrooms after having the world’s best hot fudge sundae over the world’s best cookies and cream ice cream. This simile thing is fun. I wonder how many others I can come up with. This is one of the amusing parts of staying at home. One can play with words and symbols and poetical forms with wild abandon. I should tell you that I managed to write a double dactyl that was not snarky or sarcastic but laudatory. Of course the subject was Gandhi, so it wasn’t that hard.

Gandhi

Wunditly, punditly
Gandhi, enlightened one,
Made salt at seaside and
People felt strife

Never religious dis-
Criminatorily
Hunger strike sickened him
Gun took his life.

So some good can come from snow after all. Unless of course you all hate the poem.

Daily prompt: Masks off

We’re less than a week away from Halloween! If you had to design a costume that channeled your true, innermost self, what would that costume look like? Would you dare to wear it?

Like all clinically depressed people, I have a persona that I wear that is sociable and friendly. As my shrink has pointed out more than once, I fake it to make it. When my depression is not bad (which is not to say that I am not depressed), I can actually enjoy and profit from interactions under this facade. When my depression is worse, I am barely able to maintain the mask. When it is at its worst, I don’t tend to go out, since I cannot maintain the mask. I cancel engagements, and don’t show up outside.

So would I dare to wear the worst me outside? No, and why should I? One doesn’t expect a cancer patient to parade around in her hospital johnny with tubes sticking out of her arms. Why should someone suffering from a mental illness be expected to do anything like that? Treat major illnesses the same. Depression, as some comedians would tell you, is not a joke. Nor is any form of mental illness. Nor is any illness that is real and treatable in any way.

I have written about this before. The tendency to blame the victim of mental illness, whether a suicide or not, is inconsistent with who we are as a people. It is cruel and inhumane. It is not treating another as we would be treated ourselves. It is unChristian, and unBuddhist and probably all of the other great religions. People who say suicides are selfish are so out of tune with the facts as seen by the suicide that the lack of charity is stunning.

Sorry to rant and rave on a daily prompt, but I was only following the instructions. Do you really know what’s behind your mask?

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/masks-off/

Writing 101 and Blogging 101

I may have made a big mistake because I joined both Writing 101 and Blogging 101. For one I am supposed to write stream of consciousness and for the other a blog about why I am blogging, including a picture. So I’m going to try to do each, in a way. I’m blogging because I want to get to know people and fill them in on what I’m doing. I want to make friends and inform them about myself. I think I have some important things to say and some amusing and intelligent ways to say them. Why else do people write blogs? Some have issues of importance, such as domestic abuse or writing or how to make paper airplanes. The reasons go from the sublime to the ridiculous.

I like to read other blogs and comment on them. I like to write about things that are interesting to me. I wrote and reblogged about Robin Williams because I think there is a lot of misinformation on the web and in peoples’ minds about the nature of mental illness. I know that many people think that depressed people are that way because they choose it, that if they were less selfish they would pull themselves up by the bootstraps and get over it. Do we treat any other illness this way? Do we tell people with cancer or MS or epilepsy that they are selfish? Of course not. We don’t offer home nostrums to these people either. But the number of people who have advice for little tricks or practices that will “help” the depressed seems to grow every day. And the number of people who say “I’m depressed today” when they mean they are sad is also growing. We would never say we feel a little cancerous today, but saying we’re depressed today is okay. Why? People who live with unremitting and persistent depression don’t say, “I’m a little depressed today.” In fact, they don’t reference it at all, because we live in a society that thinks depression is equal on some scale to malingering.

The problem with stream of consciousness is that one can too easily get on a soapbox. If you learned anything from that diatribe, thank you. I’ve wanted to say that for years, and it feels good to have it in writing. As you may or may not have guessed, I have suffered from unremitting and persistent depression for almost 20 years. But I’m doing better now, thanks for asking. And as I do better, I find my creativity has returned. I have written my first book and am halfway through the first draft of my second book. Numbers three and four are waiting in the wings, so I hope this progress I have made against a pernicious disease lasts long enough to get them all written.   I even have the cover ready for the first book and you can find it here.   http://www.pinterest.com/pin/308848486919623720/ I’m supposed to embed the picture in the blog. but I haven’t figured out how to do that. But here it is! How did I do that?

So I hope this post satisfies both Writing 101 and Blogging 101. And I hope you, dear reader, know a little more about me and why I write.

https://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/73069450/