Dealing with Depression

Somedays are better than others. Somedays just suck. Somedays are pretty good. Lately, I've been on the lower end of the spectrum. I'm not sure what it is, but the past few weeks have been harder than usual. The mental breakdown between productivity and laying in bed all weekend is a finer line than I would like. This might just be a little rant, but as I was reading through Reddit, I got the urge to write down some thoughts so I'm going to vent. Hello stranger! I hope your stay here is fruitful.

Maybe this all started with the celebrity suicides? I have to admit, while I did know of both Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington, I never really knew much about them. Sure, I listened to Soundgarden and Lincoln Park, but I wouldn't describe myself as anything more than an extremely casual "fan". Seeing the interaction though, watching how one person's decision had such a profound effect on someone else; it's made me think.

Last summer, my father in law killed himself. I haven't really talked to anyone about it. Not my wife, not my mother in law. Not my own friends or family. My wife found his legs sticking out from the closet in the master bedroom one morning. I rushed over to their house outside the city and waited in the front yard as the coroner arrived and cops continued to waltz in and out of the house. As they wheeled him out in a bodybag on a stretcher, I asked to see him. Call it morbid curiosity, but at the same time, I felt almost an obligation to him. I married his daughter and she would never see him again, so maybe it was up to me to carry on that final memory, for her sake? In case she ever wanted to know?

After they took his body away, I was left at the house to keep an eye on things. A relative had paid for a hazardous waste disposal company to come by and clean up the mess he left behind. Someone had to watch them right? What do you do in that situation? I sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes, staring into the pool of blood in the closet where he shot himself. He put towels down. Despite being dramatically intoxicated, he took the time to make it "easier" for whoever was left to clean up the mess. There was something respectable about that.

The waste disposal team finally arrived. Not what I expected at all. It was an older couple in their late fifties, with a big pickup truck pulling a plain white enclosed trailer full of cleaning supplies, power tools, and even a few sheets of sheetrock. It makes sense when you think about it. Everything with blood on it has to be cleaned or removed. They were nice people. They'd obviously been doing it a long time. It took them a few hours to comb through the clothes in the closet, remove the ones with blood, and then rip up the carpet and the subfloor after soaking the blood with cat litter. Then they were gone. I was left alone in a dark house, with an few square feet of carpet missing in the master bedroom closet.

Again, I mentioned at the beginning I wasn't sure where this was going. I live in that house now. My wife and I moved in to help her mom with the mortgage and the bills. Sometimes it's weird to walk past that bedroom and think about what happened; about what I saw. It's a small thought in the back of my mind at all times. An ever present darkness. I feel like that's a book I read somewhere...

So maybe it's just that? You see all the shit on the news about all the terrible things that happen in our world and they remind you of your own dark thoughts. But that's part of being human right? Knowing that all of this is temporary; that it happens to everyone. I find comfort in that I think. That someone, somewhere is struggling to find meaning in the same things that I don't understand. Maybe that person is you.

If you want to talk, reach out to me on Twitter, or a leave a comment if I still have those enabled. I honestly can't be bothered to check right this second. I don't think I'm in a "dark place" right now, just a difficult one, and maybe you are too. I think I'm gonna take a trip down to the coffeeshop and try to get some work done, drink some tea, try to find something useful in my own thoughts. Let me know if you find something useful in yours.