I fight a battle every day. Well, actually myriad, but this one is the big one. Well, not really the big big one but a Lieutenant Colonel in an army of Generals.
The big big one is my vision, or lack thereof. It fights on two fronts, the obvious head on assault screaming at me as it charges “You can’t see shit, you can’t see shit, nanny nanny boo boo”, holding its fingers in the shape of an ‘L’ against it’s forehead, demeaning me at the same time it throws its weapons at me. And the flanking maneuver, surprising me almost daily with little arrows thrown from the shadows; Words disappear on the page, ten feet are gone and I can no longer recognize my kids from 15 feet away by the way they move, now they must be five feet away. It is a sneaky and vile method of warfare and one I know I have no chance of holding my own at, much less winning but just can’t seem to quit fighting. In this case every new defeat steels my determination. I am Don Quixote but my donkey keeps pissing on my bedroll at night.
The big one, the one this writing is about, is depression. I have seen pictorial representations of depression and they are always dark and moody, coloring the periphery with grays and blacks, or hulking, overpowering shapeless beasts that cover and smother and drown.
My depression manifests itself more as an imp, a poltergeist, a malicious sprite. Hiding in nooks and crannies waiting to jump out, slap me around and disappear again under the love seat or out the car window. I know this won’t kill me, I know I can continue to live my life and enjoy giant swaths of it, I KNOW that this little bastard can’t do anything more than rattle me but it is so damn good at it that it is wearing me down.
Like a tiny vaguely painful cavity it reminds me that one wrong bite, wrong step, miscalculation or assumption and it will be there, grinning, slapping, yanking my hair and poking my eyes before popping out of my life in an instant leaving me blinking furiously, growing a bruise, shaken and confused. Picture the Three Stooges rolled into one vaguely poopy smelling creature and me, Don Quixote with a urine soaked blanket. Depression does, indeed, stink.
Okay, I love this one. I wanted to continue, but it is hard to write about depression when I am laughing out loud at my own description of it. :) Yep folks, I crack myself up.
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