There are days--too many of them--when I find it very hard to get motivated to do anything at all, except sit there and maybe read or fill my brain with mindless television. Today I feel like that.
Those days, I remember glimpses of what it felt like--almost ten years ago now, hard as that is to believe--to be caught in the mire of depression. A web of thoughts that tangle and catch, around and around, over and over, until you don't want to think anything anymore. I remember lying on the bed in my studio apartment, staring at the wall because that was all I really felt like doing. I remember studying really hard, because it kept my mind off things and seemed like my only outlet. There are a few weeks of the summer of '96 that I don't remember, because I was prescribed Ativan three times a day. I met Rob that fall, which I think did more for me than anything else--antidepressants, therapy, whatever--in getting me out of that mind state.
Every once in a while, when I have those glimpses of memory (though I did my best in the years since to kill those particular brain cells with beer and such), I get scared that it will happen again. That this is only the beginning of months, even years, of everything feeling gray and pointless. On those days, all I can do is hope that it isn't.
1 comments:
The work of the artist is often the scariest because only sometimes do you have something to "show" for it. It's the eternal freak-out: when does the well of creativity run dry for good? Keeping the pump primed for me includes going to conferences and/or getting together with the like-minded, which is why I keep beating the sometimes dead horse of ye olde writing groupe... I'm so thankful for the aquafortis chick in the trench next door... Don't you worry - I'll kick your butt if you'll kick mine.
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