Depression

For so many years I cruised. What I mean is until fairly recently I didn't feel like I was getting older or changing in any big ways. Of course I have, there are definite chapters in my life. They each have names depending on who I was with or what I was doing or who I was doing or wanted to do. Each of these chapters overlaps other chapters like melting neopolitan ice cream. Some chapters abut each other like a mixture of water and oil flowing in a gutter, they move together in the same stream but are seperate as they move yet affected by the same currents. Some of these chapters have a lock on them like the laundry room door at my apartment complex. Many people have the code to this room but we don't meet there very often.

I am currently reading a book by Pat Conroy called "My Losing Season." I know it shouldn't, because people is just people, but whenever someone like Conroy admits to terrible personal problems and even suicidal thoughts I find it shocking. You can't help but think, hey, you are a great writer, admired by thousands, why shouldn't you be the happiest person in Beaufort, SC? We all know that just isn't how it works. Often our greatest artists are our craziest fucks. I'm not saying Pat Conroy is a crazy fuck, he's just a fella like you and me. His life has chapters just like mine and occasionally he has a bad chapter.

As I was laying awake last night in another vain attempt to fall asleep before midnight I was contemplating this tendency of our kind to take our own lives. I don't know if it's obvious but it has to stem from our big brains. We are the only creatures we have met yet that can truly contemplate our own existence. We have created gods and approached the possibility of reaching the stars. We have always had the ability to grasp our own insignificance and the world can overwhelm us.