The Last Furlong

Comments on the race of life.

Depression

by 14 Comments

No question about it.

I am depressed.

I am so depressed, I couldn’t be arsed to do anything about it.

Maybe tomorrow I might feel better. Maybe tomorrow doing anything at all might feel easier, less effortful, less painful, less exhausting, more normal in the territory of cultural and political insanity that is infecting our lands. Maybe tomorrow might be a good day.

Family, friends and neighbours don’t actually ask old people about their mental health, their oncoming entropy and decay, and their approaching death do they? They don’t like talking about it, because there is nothing to say. And asking is too intrusive. If you mention your depression to your doctor you might get a session or two of CBT on the National Health Service . But who wants to talk it through with a therapist that looks about eighteen and knows fuck all about being old?

Thank god we are retired and old and invisible,

and I can feel depressed in peace

in the privacy of home!

Author: Elizabeth

I'm someone also pounding the Path, just like you.

14 thoughts on “Depression”

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  1. elenamitchell
    May 28, 2021 at 14:02

    Me too. And the last thing I want to do is talk about it.

    Liked by 1 person

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  2. Danny Tierney
    May 28, 2021 at 14:37

    The effect of night, of any flowing water, of lighted cities, of the peep of day, of ships, of the open ocean, calls up in the mind an army of anonymous desires and pleasures. Something, we feel, should happen; we know not what, yet we proceed in quest of it.
    Robert Louis Stevenson – A Gossip on Romance (1882)

    An effect of the coronavirus debacle has been to stamp out a wider view of life and death and our hunger for meaning. It has stifled an army of anonymous desires and pleasures. To some extent it has verged on stamping out our sense of self, our individuality, our history, interests, hopes and fears.

    Obviously not entirely stamped out by any means, but significantly perhaps. Enough to wonder about the less tangible harm it has caused. Life goes on, but something seems to have been sucked out of it and rendered it more mechanical, more routine.

    It gives considerable support to those who feel that listening to the clamour of the public arena is not really worth the effort. It takes too much from real life.
    it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more life becomes one long dreary opportunity to avoid viral infections,the harder it will be to even remember that those anonymous desires and pleasures actually exist.

    Ennui – a feeling of being bored and mentally tired caused by having nothing interesting or exciting to do:
    The whole country seems to be affected

    Liked by 2 people

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    • Elizabeth
      Jun 7, 2021 at 10:46

      What a beautiful comment which I only discovered today. Thank you for writing it. And I apologise I didnt know about it.

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  3. Grandad
    May 28, 2021 at 18:34

    I find the best solution is to just give into it and go with its flow, but keeping one thought firmly in mind – it will go away eventually. It always does, too.

    Liked by 1 person

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  4. Claudia
    May 28, 2021 at 18:48

    I’m truly sorry.

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  5. Ian
    May 30, 2021 at 20:48

    I play the Dublin recording of Bruce Springsteen’s Further on Up the Road, repeatedly (on bad days, I play the Johnny Cash version as well)

    Liked by 2 people

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