Putting my finger somewhere near the vicinity of the problem

I gotta say, depression has gotten a little easier for me over the past couple years.

I never know what will bring it on. Most times, it hits without warning. I may wake up one morning and not want to have anything to do with the world outside the window. Some times, outside stimuli would trigger my depression, but even then it may just be a bad event coinciding with how my mood was gonna be anyway.

Once it hits, theres not much I can do but ride it out. There's never been one tried and true cure for my depression. What works one time doesn't work the next time. Sort of like an emotional cold sore. All I do know is what I shouldn't do. When I get like this, I don't listen to NPR for more than an hour a day...or read anything by Tom Wolfe or John Irving...or make any major purchases.

It used to be that whenever one of my funks came around, which tend to come around about once a year or so, it would be compounded by the problems in my life. Work would be hectic, creditors would be hot on my heels and relationships would be strained. Right now, work is slowing down for the fall, I'm out of debt, and my friends are being really supportive. I used to suffer from a complete loss of hope, but now, I'm able to maintain a level of calm knowing that even if the worst case scenerio in my head comes true, I'm at least gonna come out of it OK.

I also can rest on the notion that none of my depressions in the past six years have lasted more than two weeks. I'm on day eight on this ebb. Granted, I'm only counting the past six years because the depression I suffered six years ago lasted nearly ten months, but that was because a lot of shit went down (bad breakup, family issues, massive debt, near crippling loneliness, etc.). About the worst I got going for me at this moment is a struggle with nicotine addiction. Big fucking deal by comparison. Ordinarily, I'd use the blog to chronicle my frustrations with quitting smoking, but I wouldn't want to risk my friend Seth commenting with the "I sucked dick for cocaine!" quote from Half Baked.

I learned long ago that my problems are just that. My problems. And there are problems that you can share with others to get the support you need, there are problems that make you sound like a whiny little bitch, and there are problems that only make you more crazy trying to talk about them because you can't pinpoint them. I'm just stuck with the latter for now. The more I try to dig deeper to find what's getting me down, the more confused I get as to what the problem is.

I guess I've just got to ride it out. There's a feeling that something's missing, and all I can do is either wait for the problem to present itself with a solution, or eventually become insignificant in the big picture. Either way, finger's crossed.