4 of 71

Write now Article Tools

...it was Officially Autumn at 5:19pm the day before yesterday. At 5:20pm the world still looked the same.That was depressing. But then for me everything is depressing. I really can't remember the last time I had a real good laugh or smiled broadly or actually felt "good" about anything...well thats not really the truth. On my 50th birthday some ten years ago, I won an All County Chili Cook Off. THAT made me happy for about half a day then it was back to Bummer City. One more sh-ty day in Paradise.

....I am not your run of the mill Depressive. I have been this way since I can remember. When I was 4 my mother took me to see my first real "shrink" because I was experiencing really radical mood swings. What fomented the trip to the Loonie Bin came about because I was trying to draw a perfect...or at least almost round...circle at the kitchen table. What started out as a seemingly joyful activity turned me into a screaming hair pulling flailing about child my mother though had lost it's mind. What I didn't realize at the time....and what 4 year old would...was that I did not posess the mechanical dexterity to accomplish the task. I still don't.

....the trip to the hospital...the first of many,many more to come...only made things worse in the long run. Dr. Weinburg...I think taht was his name...told my mother not to worry because I was "obviously a very intelligent" young man and that my outburst was completely normal. It was just that I was a bit HIGH STRUNG, with a budding ARTISTIC TEMPERMENT. He also instigated a 50 year long personal "meds" abuse program by perscribing an anti-psychotic called Ritalin; big black capsules, designed, so he said, to calm by burning out my over active behavoir. There was no such thing as ADHD back then. We are talking 1954. Dr.Spock and all that.

....I would remain Artistically High Strung for many,many years. Thankfully I lived in Northern California when the 60s rolled around. I was in the Right Place at the Right Time for procuring drugs, and boy did my younger motorcycle gang terrorist brother and I PROCURE! My Artistic Nature fit right in with the Hip crowd I hung with; hippies,outlaws,real artists, the whole scene. We bought "dope", smoked dope, mailed dope across the country, and smuggled it out of Mexico. It was the focus of my life...but still , when I "came down" off of every High I was still like Heathcliff wandering the Moors. Except that my misery had been woven into my interaction with the opposite sex. It was "cool" back then to struggle, to be elementally "flawed" and in need of constant reassurance and stroking. You know this one; threats of suicide when I didn't get my way, far too much teenaged bartering for sex; and in the end, I was still by myself and depressed; so depressed in fact that I decided to kill myself. I would let the US Army do it for me. In 1968, I got my butt shipped to VIET NAM....where I was so scared for 15 months, I didn't have time to be depressed. So ends Part I...

Learn more about this author, Brewster Moose.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about Reflections: Depression?
We want to hear your view. Write now!