My Writing Dairies #3

How Writing Became My Lifeline in Battling Depression

Profound sadness blanketed the first half of my young adult life. From the late1960s to the mid-1990s I wrote about my pain as I stood on the edge of a cliff enchanted by the rocks below. In those days I wrote with a pen on paper or used a typewriter to keep myself from jumping. Writing eased the pressure cooker of the torment I lived with.

I have kept those saviour words – early poems, chronicles about my interior life, the world I inhabited and the people in it, and a few stories.  They have been peacefully gathering dust in a big straw basket inside my closet.  In time and with help, the despair gradually lifted and never came back.

After decades of recurring bouts of depression, a cancer scare in the late 1990s propelled me to get professional help. It took more than two years of difficult psychotherapy, medication and a lifestyle that included good food and daily exercise before the black beast began its retreat.

In this blog I will share what I experienced with "the black dog" of depression at my throat.   

1960s scribblings

Usually

At times I hold a blazing sunset

But then there are moments

When I must tear my wrists

With my teeth

To make sure I’m alive

And to remind myself

That there is no infinity

As I run by the thicket

As the sharp bare points

Make my arms bleed

As I am chained on my insane bed

As my skin is quickly peeled away

I am blind

I am dumb

Unholy Ambition

How I long for someone to call me

As I fight my way

Through the powdered smells

And walk through flowers

Five feet tall

Enormous white and yellow

Rain-smelling flowers

And never to cry through

The thick clouds of grey smoke