Psyché ranimée par le baiser de l'Amour @ Le Louvre, Paris

Psyché ranimée par le baiser de l'Amour @ Le Louvre, Paris
From my latest trip to France with Zach

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Depression Regression

What a beautiful autumn we have experienced this 2009!  The leaves have delighted my eyes with their colors,  the vibrant tastes of honey crisp apples and the sweet yet smoky smell from making apple butter out over the open fire in the copper kettle... every moment teased my attention.  The weather has truly been sublime as my skin is touched by rays of autumn sun.  Seventy degrees never felt finer!  


Yet I fall deeper into the abyss of depression
It's nothing new really.
Yet it's different.
More ironic.
Why me?
Why now?  


Now is when things should be looking up.  When things should be easier.  When things should be simpler they have been in the last ten years.  My oldest child is a freshman in college with a clear career goal and the desire to achieve it.  He has grown into a fine young man of whom I am proud.  My two daughters are both here at the high school with me, and they seem to be developing into productive citizens also.  Sure, I could use more money and more time to grease the wheels of living, but who couldn't?


But it's all different lately.  I am like a scratch and sniff sticker of emotion.  Don't get near me with a coin.  I weep at the slightest touch.  


I fight my personal darkness at every corner, every turn, nearly every breath these days.  The twisted logic of the completely illogical stuns my resolve to stay healthy and resist the undertow of depression.  I am caught in a riptide of emotion, just as I was so many years earlier in the Pacific on my honeymoon in Hawaii.  We were young, dumb, singularly focused and foolishly complacent about the strength of the seemingly docile waters around the islands.  We had two rented body boards and each other, but we were no match for Mother Nature.  Surreptitiously she drew us away from the shore, and by the time we realized we were out of energy, the shore had slipped away from us.  Almost powerless felt we to return to it safely.
Back then it was water.  Now it is more murky and even stronger than the forces of gravity I struggled against  in 1998.









Here is today's poem, one that I wrote nearly ten years ago...
Read it forwards.  Then it goes backwards.  Just like depression.


“Depression Regression”
5.20.2000
By Casey A. South

Depression
Deep black sinking feeling seeping,
Pervading, filling, overflowing
Me.
Writing, talking, masking, faking,
Tonic sleep, hunger exercise
I
Wake, work, laugh, love.
It
Lifts, dissipates, evaporates
Regression…
Evaporates, dissipates, lifts.
It
Love laugh, work wake.
I
Exercise hunger, sleep tonic.
Faking, masking, talking, writing
Me
Overflowing, filling, pervading
Seeping feeling sinking black deep
Depression.


Creative Commons License
Depression Regression by Casey A. South is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at pinchingbubblewrap@gmail.com.










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