ups and downs

[Apologies to someone (you’ll know who you are). Parts of this entry were bastardized from an email I sent to you on this subject last Friday.]

I’ve always wanted everyone to know everything personal about me. Then again, I also want them to accept those personal things, and when that doesn’t happen I can sometimes react badly. But in terms of my friends and stuff, my reaction is always to tell them too much, and let them stop paying attention if they don’t want to know, or tell me to shut the hell up. (I generally assume people will tell me if they’re not interested in hearing about my boring or depressing life, but it occurs to me that if they didn’t bother, would I really ever know I was sharing too much?)

That’s one of the nicer things about blogs. You just put the information out there, and it’s up to other folks to decide what they want to read or don’t want to read.

—

For whatever reason, depression has been on my mind a lot lately, but I haven’t been actually feeling depressed. Partly, this is drbombay’s fault, as he’s been going through a rough breakup. But the topic has been broached in email recently as well.

Just now I dug back through irish-girl’s blog searching for this one post where the comments got deep into the topic of whether depression was good for creativity, but I couldn’t manage to find it.

I do think I write better poetry when I’m down and out. It’s the mindset–so focused on something terrible. Focus is good for poetry, as are terrible topics.

I usually talk about depression in terms of cycles. Yesterday DrBombay was particularly manic. I get manic too sometimes… but it’s been awhile. In fact, it’s been quite a while since I’ve felt particularly depressed. I think there was a week or so in the middle of the fall somewhere. I do get depressed about work fairly frequently, but I guess I think of that as par for the course–reactionary depression, not the depression that comes on for no reason and goes away for no reason. Then again, DrBombay’s depression is reactionary too. Doesn’t make it any less real or hard to deal with.

I have always felt fairly up-and-down throughout my life. That is, manic one week and depressed the next, with weeks of relative “normalcy” thrown in for good measure. At one point I was very “aware” of my cycle, and could tell you when I was going to be doing what… if I remember right it was actually more like two weeks of something–two weeks of the next. But again, I think most of that is behind me.

Of course everyone has had particularly depressing things happen to them in their childhood. I once jumped out of a two-story window to avoid the wrath/anger of my dad. In some of my worst moments I contemplated suicide, but never for more than a few hours at a time. I tend to worry when I’m depressed, and the thought of what that kind of decision would mean to my friends an family is usually enough to think of alternatives. I also think I love the manic parts of life too much to leave them–when everything seems to be going right, even if rationally it’s not any better than any other day.

While I’m talking about depression, I might as well mention that I’ve always had an aversion to therapy. I want to figure something out for myself. I re-read Rilke’s Letters to A Young Poet recently, and in it somewhere he talks about how it is a poet’s business (or duty, or something) to know him or herself. If I feel strongly about something, without knowing why I feel that way, I really feel compelled to sit down and just think about it until I understand my emotions. This is something I’ve always done, and it was only recently that I realized other people don’t always feel compelled to do the same. For that reason, (and because I realize there are some rare people out there without friends to bounce their emotional turmoil off of), I have revised my opinions on the whole psychiatric profession to admit grudgingly that it may be the best thing for some people in some situations. I just hope I am never one of those people.

But I’ve ranted long enough. I think I might be getting rather depressed just thinking about depression. How depressing is that? I have other, more pressing things to attend to.