Seeing the Obvious

Startling thoughts, lately.  I think I'm smack dab in the middle of some depression, and it's freaking me out - freaking me out to feel that old familiar hopelessness and struggle so much not to acknowledge it.  To watch my weight balloon up and at the same time to feel desperatly like that needs to be changed, but at the same time completely apathetic about doing so.  The task seems so overwhelming and unachievable and easy all at the same time.

I am my biggest naysayer.  It's the trick of depression that I'm both - and at the same time, sometimes in the same breath - my own worst enemy and my own best friend...

I am both my own worst naysayer and the only person who can motivate me onward.  The only hope for me is me, and I'm the one who's telling me there's no hope!  Depression is kinda laughable when you look at it like that, isn't it?  I suppose it's best to keep your sense of humor.

To keep it all in context, of course, I have to remember that though my woes are my own, and only I can feel them keenly, they are relative to the woes of others.  Have I turned you on to a guy named Salam Pax?  He's a blogger in Iraq who's been both a fascinating read and a source of inspiration for me.  Reading what he and his family and friends are going through day by day tends to remind me that there is indeed hope for me, and maybe I should just keep my whiny-ass mouth shut.

Sometimes the discovery of the obvious feels like parting the mists and staring God dead in the eye.  I spend much of my life wishing the rest of my life away.  It's something I've been fighting all of my adult life - the theme that I return to time and again.  Only I keep hoping that as I do it, I recognize it for what it is and cut it a little shorter.  That's what life is, I suppose, in the end - a series of skirmishes with yourself in which your patience with your own particular brand of craziness lessens as time goes on - with each skirmish, as it were.

My own brand of craziness - my foibles - sometimes seem legion, and even if I weren't depressed I find them hard to manage.  I wonder if other people feel the same way?  Are we all crazy together, only separately?