meant to live

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The Rhinelander school system reports a now-excused absence from the last half of the day for one Isaac Bowen, senior.

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It’s 10:27, but the tablet clock says past midnight. Like my watch and the long-dead wooden clock in the corner, it’s wrong.

I called it a day hours ago, opting for a book and music in my room to anything else. I’m reading The Rule of Four – fantastic book. Intelligent, yet engaging. A quote:

Hope, … which whispered from Pandora’s box only after all the other plagues and sorrows, is the best and last of all things. Without it, there is only time. And time pushes at our backs like a centrifuge, forcing us outward and away, until it nudges us into oblivion. … It’s a law of motion, a fact of physics … , no different from the stages of white dwarfs and red giants. Like all things in the universe, we are destined from birth to diverge. Time is simply the yardstick of our separation. If we are particles in a sea of distance, exploded from an original whole, then there is a science to our solitude. We are lonely in proportion to our years.

Hope. Ask me at any other time, and I’d put it on the level with love, “the quintessential human delusion”.

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It was cleared with a parent phone call, along with the morning absence on Thursday (appointment at Ministry Behavioral Health).

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But now… [sighs] another place without an ending and all that. Iris. Good guys.

I’ve been diagnosed with clinical depression. If you know me at all (or have been reading this blog…), that won’t be a shocker. There’s even a family history to go with it. My parents, interestingly, think it’s a something of symptom, not entirely an independent… disease.

At some level, I agree with them. While depression is a disorder in its own right, I think it’s brought on / encouraged by a deliberately withdrawn and closed mentality, more often than not. When I say that my world is bleak, I’m referring to “my world”. Depression takes a guy and twists him back around and into himself – a cycle, if you will, where the only new sight is the footsteps you left behind the last time around. A sad, quiet circle, traced by a soul oddly fascinated by its own decay.

A selfish thing, in essence, much as I hate to say that, born of an extended look in the mirror and an abandonment of everything else. Tends to escalate, too.

“Everything else” here defined as hope, love, God. And I rather think that this is why depression is as widespread as it is – not just the diagnosed incidents, but the Prozac Nation mentality as a whole. Society encourages a focus on oneself, from spas to self-help books. And when your view of yourself obstructs everything else, then yes the outlook is bleak. There is nothing for the solitary human.

Which is the conclusion that, at the great age of 18, I have come to. It makes sense, chemical imbalance or no, natural tendency or otherwise.

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Stoxen Pharmacy processed a check in his name for a 20mg prescription of fluoxetine, written by Dr. Zak, along with a $6.10 box of excedrin.

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So – how to get out of it. The meds should help. Improve my exercise regime, try to get out more. Try to get my focus off of me and back on God, trite as that might sound.

Did you need to know all of this? Probably not, loyal reader, but you now know anyway.

afterthought

It’s… hard. To want to be “fixed”. I said this earlier in another section, but having a more positive personality just sounds… tiring. You can’t convince a depressed person that life should be enjoyed. It’ll make sense, and said person will be able to see that life can be enjoyed, but no worthwhile purpose will be obvious. Or, well, going on my case. Not sure why I felt like adding this, but there y’are.

secondary afterthought

If you’re on a monitor at anything under 1024×768, I’ve given up on you and will be using graphics that cause the window to expand beyond your screen size or display the dreaded horizontal scrollbar, shunned by designers (almost) everywhere. Upgrade.