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The Darkness at Noon

I haven't been here in a while.

Isn't it funny how we describe some of the sites as if they were rooms or places--physical space.

June and July were...hard. It rained almost non-stop in June, and perhaps half the time in July. It's raining today. And I could not outrun my black dogs.

I suffer from depression. I think I've made that pretty clear on here. Most of the time it's just a general sorrow--a little more effort to be happy or functioning. The past two months have been major darkness. An inability to see much good in anything--a hopelessness, a lack of dreams for the future. If you've never been there (another sense of a physical location) then you cannot understand.

Oddly, just before it went dark I went to see one of my favorite bands, The Psychedelic Furs in concert. I'd only waited 25 years for the chance. They were old, of course, but sounded good and the setting was intimate. I had no expectations and thus enjoyed myself very much. The only funny thing was how happy the lead singer seemed to be. He smiled all the time--like he'd discovered Prozac.

Now this is a gloom and doom sort of band. So seeing him smile seemed, discordant. And it related to something on Bones (the show), where the phychiatrist played by Stephen Fry said that no-matter how depressed or nihilistic a dark band seems, somehow they create something--the anti nihilism. They express themselves.

And I've heard other depressed actors talk about their struggles, and my question is--HOW DO THEY DO IT? When I'm depressed I can barely get out of bed. Everything seems pointless. The voices in my head say that I won't get that role, I won't write anything good, etc. And so I do nothing.

How do they channel their darkness--some with drugs both legal and illegal, but my legal drugs make little impact and the illegal will take you down eventually.

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