“For I’m bound to ride that southern railroad…”

 

 

Winston Churchill called it his “black dog”.

[I’ve never been able to listen to the Led Zeppelin song the same way, since.]

Considering I’ve lived with depression my entire life:

I find the analogy apt.

 

 

Like a loyal canine, it’s there at my every footstep.

It sleeps by my bedside.

It wakes when I do.

It demands my time.

And it waits, oh so patiently, those rare moments I’m away.

 

 

Oddly enough, it’s not the time during those bouts that get you.

Sure, they inhibit countless aspects of your life.

But you self–medicate.

[Because, after all, olde school men don’t bitch.]

 

 

However, after your place is smokier than the shoveling station of a locomotive—

After you shit blood from so much whiskey—

After you see your bank balance in negatives from having not worked in months [if not years], even having acquired a small fortune—

You realize troubles multiply exponentially and misery arrives long before the hearse you hoped prayed would.

 

 

Your answering machine is full of bill–collectors, friends that are pissed you’re “ignoring” them and family that is fed up with your “usual nonsense”.

Not to mention, the few that do catch up with you telling you that you should “just get over it. Be happy”.

It’s all you can do to keep from knocking their teeth out and asking them, as they lay semi–comatose on the floor—

If they ever tell hemophiliacs to just stop bleeding.

 

 

Ω