Black Dog

Then too you cannot spend an hour alone;

No company’s more hateful than your own;

You dodge and give yourself the slip; you seek

In bed or in your cups from care to sneak;

In vain: the black dog follows you and hangs

Close on your flying skirts with hungry fangs

Horace

I know this. I have been there. I have felt the Black Dog possess me. This is for all of those out there who have felt it too.

I will not dwell on what I have been through. This will only serve to remind me more of how I felt. Instead I want to share my feelings about what I think caused my depression and what I did to try and help myself. Someone might recognize something…

Society

We are all meant to conform. Do this at that age because you have to have reached that stage and such and such time of life. We from school to college to university to a career. We are almost expected to get married and have children before the age of 30. Oh yes, we are all meant to do things before we are ‘too old’. If you try but don’t manage to conform then it is almost certain that you will feel yourself to be a failure. This was why the Black Dog caught me. This is what fed Him. I realised though that these are societal pressures, they have little to do with reality. It is this realisation that now keeps him at bay. I am unique. My life is unique. Society cannot know my fate. As Lao Tzu said,

Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like

 You do have to be brave to face reality. Life brings good things and it brings bad. To be brave is to live. To be brave is to be Black Dog’s worst enemy…

 Happiness 

 I do not find it difficult anymore to be brave. It has become a habit. I have various ‘strategies’ to cope with life. I break large problems down into smaller ones, avoid The Jeremy Kyle Show like the plague, (it makes me weep for humanity if this is the way we are going to ‘solve’ our problems), and I take time to look at the wild flowers on the way to work. I give myself a break if things go wrong and I give myself space if things get on top of me. I also believe that Sir Thomas Browne is right,

All the wonders you seek are within yourself

 You have to believe in yourself if you are going to be happy. This is key.

Thankful

Yes I am thankful that I have met Black Dog. I believe that depression has allowed me to see the truth of things. I am content now with who I am. I have problems but they are not going to kill me, and some things that I used to see as problems are actually no problem at all. I know that Black Dog will never go away, but I can keep him at a distance. I am able to smile all the time and I laugh on most days. As Albert Camus said,

 In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer