Damnable depression

My brain isn't very reliable these days.

It has trouble getting from "here" to "there." It forgets where it's been. I send it out to fetch things and it doesn't come back.

The best way I can describe it is to imagine holding your breath while running across the bottom of a swimming pool--your vision blurred, your feet failing to find traction, your coordination defeated by the heavy water and queer gravity--expending so much energy for so maddeningly little progress that frustration soon gives way to futility and you're left thrashing helplessly in the deep end as the last of your oxygen expires.

Thinking under water.

Despite this, I often have trouble turning my brain off. Seems I'm always obsessively puzzling over some bit of trivia or another. I'm pretty sure this is a defense mechanism. My depression is so chronic that, if I don't keep my mind constantly occupied, I get sucked into some frighteningly dark places that I can't afford to visit too often.

As you might imagine, a brain that won't work but refuses to shut down isn't much fun to be around. I spend a lot of nights lying in bed wishing I could either follow a train of thought or let it go altogether. It reminds me of the way my father's old pick-up would diesel after he switched off the ignition.

Since I've been following the campaign pretty closely lately, it's not so surprising that my brain has been spending a lot of time running sprints in the deep end of the political pool. Occasionally I manage to string together enough coherent thoughts to construct a blog post in my head.

Sadly, these "posts" never seem to find there way onto the blog. When I sit down to write, the exhaustion and depression kick in and I invariably find myself back in bed, writing more "posts."

Sigh.