Depression: Know Your Roses

Everything I ever needed to know about depression I learned from M Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled. It was one of those books that my Dad read, re-read and recommended. I finally picked it up one day, read page 1, put it down, and never picked it up again.

I also never forgot Peck's words. Depression is caused by loss. It might be the loss of something good, bad, good disguised as bad or bad disguised as good. Regardless, it's still a loss. We might have asked for the loss, or it might have simply happened. It's still a loss.

So if my understanding is so satisfactory, and serves me well as a diagnostic tool, why is my relationship with depression best characterized as a 7th-level wailing and gnashing of teeth? Chemistry and experience.

Chemistry is resolved with ease and simplicity for those with real need. Or at least as easily and simply as you can say "pharmaceuticals." Not all of us can, and I held out for a long time. Stupid.

Experience is another matter entirely. Change never stops happening. Despite what we're told, life does not get better/easier with time. Horseshit. As long as loss/change keeps happening, and my desire to both know myself and be true to myself continues it's cyclical snake-with-its-tail-in-its-mouth presence, I'll keep learning how to better respond with integrity.

Perhaps Depression is the condition or diagnosis, and Despair is the result. I don't know. That's why I have a therapist that is smarter than me. If you don't have a Rich Schulman in your life, join me on my dad's path to personal integrity:

• Know Thyself (Socrates)
• This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. (Shakespeare)
• Let go of the rosebush(c) (Thought this was an AA slogan, but apparently my dad coined this phrase. Cool. I call copyright!)