Comes The Darkness.

There's a certain shame that goes hand-in-hand with depression in men. Buck up, little soldier, they'll say. Get over it. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. And if you point out that such sentiments only make the matter worse, you're just feeling sorry for yourself.

But even that's not the worst of it. No, that honor goes to the inner criticisms. You know the ones -- the ones that insist depression is some sort of character flaw. The ones that ask why you are sitting on your ass staring out the window instead of getting up and doing something about it.

The ones that don't understand that you CAN'T get up off your ass but you can't explain why.

Because you don't know.

It's a common misconception that depression is a chronic state of being deeply sad.

At least for me, it's a chronic state of numbness punctuated with periods of acute hopelessness. Sadness comes sometimes, but what most defines my depression is an inability to think.

Picture the confusion of being really, really drunk, without the fun of a buzz.

Now picture that confusion lasting for weeks, even months. And the inability to see any end to it in your future.

That's what it's like for me, to varying degrees, at least six months out of the year. The pit usually begins around the autumn equinox, although it came somewhat early this year, gets deepest around the winter solstice, and finally relents around the spring solstice.

This next confession may well cause you to think I've totally lost my mind.

With me, the darkness sometimes takes on a visual manifestation. I can SEE it, in the form of a dark shadow hovering in a corner of my bedroom near the ceiling. Last year, it manifested itself as a hopeless black hole in the corner closest to my closet. It grew and shrank both in size and intensity, but it stayed in the same spot. This year, it is in the opposite corner, just over and to the left of my bedroom door.

Last year, and the year before, I managed to beat the darkness by becoming this bitter, cynical chap. I dressed like a THE/DAN* major and fell back too often on my caustic wit. I wore my skulls shirt on Xmas, prompting blank stares and bitchy comments from passers-by. Instead of celebrating Xmas, I celebrated the winter Solstice (because I knew it would get better from there on) and Kwanzaa (as a protest of the fakery of Xmas). Sometimes, the only way to beat the darkness is to outdark it.

But even last year, I could tell I was in the throes of the Law of Diminishing Returns. Think about opening a new can of Pringles. The first chip tastes fantastic, and the next a little less so, as your tastebuds fatigue. Before you know it, you've eaten the whole tube, chasing the pleasure of that first chip. But the pleasure never comes. So it is with Outdarking the Darkness.

It's not working like it used to.

And the bad thing is -- I've run out of strategies for beating the darkness. I tried plastering on a fake smile and "getting in the holiday spirit" several years ago. It made things worse, because underneath it all was the inconvenient knowledge that it wasn't real. I tried smothering the darkness with food, and that DOES work, but only as long as I am shoveling food into my face. As soon as I put down the spoon, the darkness returns, with it's colleagues Shame and Regret. Drinking works, but unfortunately I can't afford to be drunk 24/7.

I'll try Outdarking it again, and trying to remember that all I have to do is gut it out until the spring Solstice, but if that fails, I don't know what I'll do, because if that is the case, I fear I am lost.


* - THE/DAN is the abbreviation SMSU used on it's class schedules for Theatre & Dance. THE/DANs dressed all in black, smoked a lot, and seemed to be very depressed people. Think Janeanne Garofolo.