I have reported my battles with the Black Dog of depression. This has been a long campaign; there have been truces and cease fire agreements, some wins and a few really serious wins for the dark canine where it was only my Samaritan training that kept me from self harm.
A little while back, whilst in almost headlong retreat, I set about some self-analysis. By dint of some serious journal writing, I identified that which seemed to open the kennel door. Without too much salacious detail, it was founded on a relationship dating back to 1950 when I was just 17. I never achieved a resolution and found myself asking all the What If and Where Now questions. Whilst I had the skill to trace people, I held off as I feared that any reunion could be dangerous to my life as it is now.
I thus learned to avoid too much introspection - peeking through semi-closed eyes from behind the sofa as this is OK in brief spells. But the World seems keen to introduce things that I suspect could be as harmful as 1950 revisited. Where is the Good News? No sooner was I coming to terms with a Crossbow Cannibal than we have the Cumbria Catastrophe. Tsunami led to earthquakes led to Ash Clouds. 9/11 led us to Afghanistan and 7/7. Blair transmogrified into Brown to be replaced by yet another bucket of Bollocks that is Coalition. And then the flotilla sailed in. Elsewhere one Korean country seems determined to do a practical test of its nuclear assets whilst the other Land of Morning Calm has its belligerence endorsed by America looking for a proxy warrior nation.
Minor nuisances skirmished in and around the major annoyances. What is it with the newspaper fascination for stings and outings? Why bother with £500,000 demands when people such as Blair charge very large sums for a couple of days a year as 'adviser' or special representative? And just what is it about Britain having Talent? I avoid it but the adverts show we are invaded by alien performances of body poppers, street dancers and Michael Jackson-inspired wannabees. I have the image of US has Talent drowning under a flood of Morris Men and Clog Dancers. Why the hell has Simon Cowell not been assassinated?
I once got quite close to a Jewish woman. She worked then for a UN quango thing but I had photographs of this bronzed Amazon tilling the earth with little more than a pointed stick. Her deliciously long and tanned legs ended with heavy boots. Over one shoulder a bag with seeds. Over the other, the strap of a sub-machine gun. Our first night of nakedness led to my finding a tattooed number on her arm; she never expanded why she survived longer than the ink drying took. She died in a traffic accident but we were together long enough for me to understand the scale and nature of dissent with Palestine.
I am able to see where the situation has got with the latter-day confrontations and have sympathy for the Palestinians. My depression risk here lies in the fact that there is no solution in sight. The stage is now occupied by political extremists who pose and strut but with absolutely no agenda that might bring peace to a troubled land. Why has mankind that can set foot on the moon failed to achieve a meaningful solution? The sort of money that, say, Saudi Arabia spends on supporting what to us are terrorists aiming to destroy would do much to ameliorate the life choices of some bare-footed, naked-arsed kid in Gaza. Exactly the same sort of kid that the money spent disintegrates in Kabul. The religion in those parts has some wonderful aspirations but is fragmented in impact by inter-nicene activity.
Money. Large sums donated to charities both long-term and for special disasters. World aid from the richer nations to 3rd world dwellers. But so little is achieved if one is an onlooker. People still in tents in tsunami-country. Women and kids walking miles with jugs of water balanced on their heads. Malaria and disease associated with bad or non-existent sanitation. Warfare where press-gangs target sub-teenage warriors. The ways that women are abused and humiliated. The richer nations have standing armies that could do so much but are employed slaughtering each other. Say five men dig a well a day - how many wells do we get from a battalion in six months? A deep trench latrine - four men and one day so set up 250 men for that same time span. Simples as my genus Suricata friend would say. Injections - my local GP clears a community hall of 500 people in an afternoon.We have tempted the medics that could do this in another country to come here and sew up drunks on a Saturday night.
It is not just that we seemingly lack the nous to get these things sorted - we are deficient in the will so to do. The United Nations is everything but United. The EU spends our money deciding such things as the appropriate colour for Health and Safety signs at a pedestrian crossing. African nations have multi-Nation Organisation - I rest my case.
As a kid from between 7 and 10 years old I was exposed to attacks from a Christian fundamentalist Aunt. I suspect she was concerned lest I had inherited the strange powers of her spiritualist mother. Whilst my parents were beating the Asperger devil out of me, she sought to fill me with religious knowledge and attitudes. I rebelled and she never did discover if I had 666 under the hair on my head. What I do know is that I cannot foresee any level of her influence that would have retained my belief in any form of God. I have no idea whether such an entity exists - I just question what She is doing. I know of the theory that things are sent to try us and it fits where applied to individuals. But, why try whole regions of the world. Legions of individuals. It just does not make sense. To me anyway.
I suppose that the sheer multiplicity of depression-inducing situations and events has one thing going for it - just so many that no one item predominates to act as a focus for the rest. That is what I shall have to tell myself.
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