Depression and Me

I have suffered from moderate to severe depression for years. The VA has even seen fit to award me a 50% disability for PTSD and major depressive disorder. Of course, I take antidepressants but they are not magic elixirs. Sometimes they work well, sometimes not so well. Some days are better than others. Some days I get a lot done, some days nothing. Some days I find myself longing for bedtime so I can take my sleeping pill and escape for a while.

Depression takes away the joy of discovering new things and saps your creativity. It’s difficult to interact with other people because your affect can be so flat (a lack of emotional expressiveness) as to make you appear uninterested. At times you want to do nothing more than sit in a quiet place and be alone. You have to make yourself get up and be active, to participate in life. As a blogger who enjoys a somewhat sarcastic bent, it is especially difficult to write on a regular basis. Humor and depression do not play very well together. I find that very frustrating. Perhaps you can understand why I may go for long periods without posting and when I do, it’s likely to be only a humorless travel report.

Still, I have managed to write a memoir, “Uncle Sam Ain’t Released Me Yet,” of my time in the US Army. However, it did take me about 25 years to complete. In a way it was a form of self-therapy plus a way to let my kids know what I did during the Vietnam War. Fortunately, I made a lot of notes early on. It is no award winner but I am proud of it. It’s a real book. A 6” x 9” paperback of almost 400 pages, including 100 photographs. You can go back through my blog's archives and read it or you can check it out on Amazon at https://goo.gl/0RjkcK ($2.99 for the Kindle version and $11.95 for the paperback).