Churchill’s black dog (Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014)- An Old article extended, edited..

Churchill’s black dog

(Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014)- An Old article extended, edited..

I had previously written an article on anxiety, now let me write an article on its ugly first cousin called depression.

When you have an illness –and in this case I need not give a diagnostic or medical name for the illness- that cannot be given proper medical treatment for a long term cure, you begin to despair. You have to carry yourself through the thick and thin.  Pondering on the grey uncertainties of the future and the limitations of the present, you despair, and this is especially true when you try to live like “everyone else” at a more elongated position and with a more hectic existence..then you know that you have come too far out from your own comfort zone.

When you cannot work- despite the fact that you want to work, because your bodily systems- be they the endocrinal, the nervous or the immune systems- are unable to function and manoeuvre at an ordinary rate as the average healthy human body works upon, then you are fighting your own weaknesses.  In my case I have accepted long ago, the full limitations and symptoms of my disorder. The infliction grants disorder to the senses, the capacities of the brain to function and this drains the energy of the body- thus daily restrictions to the bed occur and the wrestle to work are common enough. I am driven by a pathological fear of what people think of me at times...especially with the fact that I want to work but often I nearly come to mental collapse after several highly stressful days of full on labour.

Churchill had famously declared to others about his "black dog following him" throughout life, and many creative, innovative and high-minded people of an outstanding caliber of intelligence suffer such a malaise and affliction (I dont include myself in such a list). Greats minds on the fine balance between sorrow and joy -rather than sanity and madness- seem to have their heads touch the metaphysical heights and yet plunge to the lows of Tartarus. Depression is not realistic, not in touch with reality, it seems to be a poor, rather negative response to a crisis or series of crises that trigger our feeling of despondency and defeat, but such feelings are not true.

What can take you out of this toxic mind frame? I pray, it really is the mantle and the refuge of the despairing soul with his rapier to the world and the conditions that limit him, sometimes his own voice of self-defeat can be an enemy in itself. Where are the moments of poetic beauty, each man needs a breathless tide to take us to a greater shore! Watching wildlife from afar has been a boyhood passion that never relents in the face of time, each new species and specimen I find, inspires me to write and even to study further into the mysteries of each habitat and behaviour they entail

Coming with the joys of creativity come the feelings of being overwhelmed and being smothered by the problems of life that counter and contrast the highs we have had earlier on in the week

In the past all I wanted was to escape from this Alcatraz of pain and redundancy and be doped out. I look back with shame on each occasion but I know in my heart of hearts that there is another door, another choice to be made and another person out there who can relate to what I have gone through and to what you have gone through! One loses one's touch with reality -when you are in my situation- every so often and go a little crazy! Life is not a game, nothing is cheap, nothing is won through easy gain, it is herculean at times, a veil of tears, it, it can be heartbreaking, it comes with repetitious questions, but sometimes we find a grace of strength that carries us through on the moment of a great need. We cannot always call such happenings coincidence, and from my experience I will call them miracles, formerly perhaps when I was indeed a very angry, cynical man, I would have thought differently, but now the soft tender skin has had to grow thicker to the harsh conditions of the world. We have to live in hope and be builders on the foundations of meaning (As a Christian that meaning is relationship with Christ, as a living truth).

 We want to fight beyond the walls of limitations and fear is perhaps the greatest of such terrible walls!

I myself worry about the future, constantly, about finding ample full time employment, about my property issues and matters of survival and of course since I have been diagnosed with three illnesses of the mind- I do indeed worry about issues on functionality, dependencies -having to depend on family-, responsibilities and cares that need to be maintained, renewed and looked after. From the highs to the lows the reader must note that the Day is much, much brighter than the night, there is a candle that rises in its luminosity as the new day in a great new creation, do you believe in the infinite night? You possess the key for turning on the switch that converts the dark to light in an instant, no matter how bad it gets, moral integrity, love, devotion and bonds of meaning hang men in a wonderful suspension to keep them from the crocodiles of their own over-rationalities bellow the tightrope walk. For me faith is essential, but this light gets better and bigger, what have I to lose, to try is everything and as one philosopher stated "A start is the most difficult thing to have", I believe that we have the start but need the orientation to make the journey into the unknown. 

Each person woke unto existence and knew not where nor how they came to be, but simply lived and acted like the players on the stage, but life is more than acting its about being, and for me as a Christian its about relationship with God, because I choose to know and choose to follow this path. Depression at times too can an existential crises on the deepest matter of all, where hence did we come from and where are we going? Such will determine one's psychology to face the inevitable and yet be strong.

Each reader must note and know that their life does not belong to a psychiatrist but is in their own hands in many ways, they are not the numbers on a hospital list, but the real living beings, who when perceived properly are capable of doing much more, as one must not resign oneself to a fate of hopelessness but be determined to rise to face the challenge, as miracles occur in the extraordinary moments of human compassion, community, empathy and indeed in acts of great faith and grace!