[cancer|personal] The black dog barks

As I have mentioned before, I have a history of chronic depression in my childhood and young adult years. This includes pretty much all the classic manifestations including social withdrawal, self-destructive behavior, and even a suicide gesture that put me in the hospital at 16 then under supervision for a considerable time thereafter. This was years before Prozac and much of the rest of the modern psychopharmakon. I recovered with considerable therapy and, frankly, time.

This past week has seen the return of that depression as deeply as I've felt it since the days of my youth. Hence my withdrawal from blogging, from writing, from exercise, from pretty much anything except the immediate needs of the moment. This has been very frustrating for calendula_witch, as well as my other friends and family, most especially including markferrari. I've managed to make it through Thanksgiving with calendula_witch's family as well as the_child and tillyjane without any deeply disastrous behavior, but I haven't exactly been a barrel of laughs to be around.

I say all this now not by way of seeking an Internet group hug (though I will leave comments open on this post), but to talk again about how cancer and chemotherapy continues to affect my life. This depression is absolutely driven by the events of the past year. Having largely dealt with the physical symptoms and side effects, we now slog through the emotional effects. On me, on calendula_witch, on everybody.

It's not easy being blue. But one still wakes up on the morning.