Experimenting

I've been feeling a little dark at times. Depressed, down, whatever you would like to call it. I think I need to call it depressed so that it sinks in. For a very long time, I did not. Let depression drag somebody else down, not me. I'm funny. I'm not depressed. I laugh. But I cry. I'm just agitated. It's hormones. It's sometimes hard to reconcile the two me's. Now before you go scrambling for your Gray's Anatomy or PDR or whatever the fuck book lists the mental health diagnoses, I'm not schizophrenic. But the moodiness can take me for a ride sometimes. The thing is - rides make me nauseous.

I suffer from depression. I get up each day, I go to work, I am among the living, but apparently I've got this chemical makeup that works great for poets, musicians and writers, but apparently I'm none of the above. Just a working class zero. For the past 2 plus years, I've been on medication for depression. But lately, I began to reconsider how I was feeling and some of its side effects. I have just switched to a new medication. Notice I have not listed the particulars. I don't really want to go into a pharmacological discussion at this time. I just want to own this part of me.

I come from a long line of depression and mental health issues. Oh and alcoholism. Often not a good combination. My paternal grandfather hung himself. Apparently this occurred after my grandmother sent my father out to deliver the crushing news that he shouldn't come back home. In a boarding house in Hell's Kitchen, New York City, he hung himself. A story's got to start somewhere.

But where this one goes is so far removed from that story; yet I find if I don't begin to explore the origin, I am not being truthful. This is part of who I am. There it is - the groundwork that begins the tale.

A tale that began when a jaunty Irishman - a tailgunner in World War II marries his sweetheart in the Tenth Ward Democratic Club.

G-d help us all.