Usually I’m the last one to be depressed

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

The most startling aspect of my depression is my ability to deny it. When I’m not depressed, which thankfully is the vast majority of the time, I joke about how invariably the first symptom of my depression is my denial of it.

I work hard at my own personal development. I know I can be a prize prick, a raging bull and at times of writing fiction, a serial solipsist. If there are bad patterns in my life, I try to identify them, break them up and create better ones.

So when I realised that the majority of heinous social crimes I’d committed in the past could be filed under ‘Dumping my stress on an innocent friend’, I worked hard to change. If my family is my life blood, my friends (despite being scattered all over the world) are my home. I cannot afford to piss them off, so I worked on it and changed my behaviour. Now, instead of lashing out at people, I withdraw, try to let my heated emotions cool down, so that I can understand whether anyone is in fact guilty of anything.

So I’m constantly trying to become all self-aware of myself and my mind, a little bit of CBT, a dash of mindfulness, a pinch of meditation and a whole dollop of peaceful space cadet staring out the window at the clouds. I’m on the case.

Unfortunately though, the ‘case’ in this case is the case of a man with temporary mental difficulties, (which, dear colyoomistas, you are at present experiencing vicariously, as you try to reap threads of sense from my scattered mental process) and even though I know well my habit of denying depression, when it comes along, it’s just so bloody inconvenient, I go into denial about it all over again.

This one was quite easy to deny, because life was offering a mosaic of scenarios which individually would make anyone feel a little blue and collectively prove too much.

Hence my denial. Depression is a very rude guest. It moves in just when it wants to, with no consideration for the timing of its arrival.

In the past I would be floored, alienated, lost altogether to depression. In 1993 I was walking up Lenaboy Avenue when I doubled over, as if hit in the belly by Mike Tyson. To this day I have no idea what kind of physical chemical imbalance could cause that reaction, but the moment I straightened up, I had my Black Dog walking by my side.

Whether it’s just the passing of time, the result of eating bananas or fish oil, my depressions of the last decade have been far less debilitating. Although in many ways this is a good thing, in several others it has proved far more of a challenge than the older darker immobilising bouts.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.