Crossroads and Life

I wasn't sure I was going to continue the DNC Facebook page, but I just topped 1,000 followers and it does bring a little joy into my life, so I'm going to keep with it.  I love making the memes.  I love combing the internet for quotations by depressives on depression.  It's a creative outlet for me, and that's something I need right now, since I haven't been able to write since 2013.

I used to write children's stories.  The one I self-published is still available in ebook form on Amazon.  I'm not trying to peddle my book, but my writing is/was a huge part of who I am.  You can get an idea of how I express myself creatively.  They have the free 'peek inside.' 

And before I retired print copies, I ordered a few, and getting a real book in my hands that was filled with the story I wrote was a huge huge deal for me.  It was exhilarating.  When I found myself roadblocked on writing, I was six chapters into a suspense novel.  It was my first foray into full-length adult novels.  Not 'adult' as in porno.  Adult as opposed to children's.  I thought I had quite a unique plot idea.  Then the iron gate came down.  I haven't been able to write ever since.  Depression's not something you can just write through.

Another huge thrill for writers--even self-published ones--is finally seeing your book's cover.  I had been writing these characters for years, and finally got to see their faces.  I got a cover and several interior pictures.  I was on cloud nine.

I wrote my book under a pen name, Northern Adams.  I had started on a second book, as Mickey and his Gargoyle were to be serial characters.  I was also working on a new serial to be a modern-day Encyclopedia Brown or Harriet the Spy, and had started the adult suspense.  I had depression, but was still able to function enough to work on my stories.  It's now been a full year since I could write a single word.  And this isn't regular writer's block.  I'm completely stone-walled.

And this failure to write compounds depression because it's a personal failure.  Correction, it's another personal failure sitting on top of a huge pile of personal failures.  My current theory is that in addition to the brain-fog and loss of concentration and all the anger and resentment that comes with depression, I might be able to start writing again if I can somehow write about my depression the way Elizabeth Wurtzel and Richelle Goodrich did.  Maybe that will be cathartic or therapeutic for me.

If not, then I worry that it's completely dead in me, writing for joy and fulfillment.  I'm not a person who can just bounce around, living life in the moment and for the moment.  I've always had to have something to tether myself to.  I feel like I woke up in someone else's body--a dead body--and now my life is just day after day of walking that corpse around in the world, tethered to nothing.  I'd give anything to have my life back.