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Blog Entry 152 of 216 The Lakewood Zit Journal
A couple of weeks ago, I got a zit. It’s the first one I can remember having since 1967. And it would appear on the end of my nose on a night I had an appointment to model at a photography gallery. I can’t get that zit off my mind. So I’ve decided to immortalize it with a journal. All the old stuff is still in here but, starting Memorial Day, May 26, 2008, new stuff will begin to arrive. I’ve been practicing my typing so I’m ready to crank it out on the screen and blog it directly to your living room, anywhere in the world. So sit back. This is the real thing. This is The Lakewood Zit Journal.

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~WritingInTheGoldenYears

Ode to May which is mental health month
Contributed by: Robert White   on 5/8/2007

There are things I know I should never do for one reason or another, things I shouldn't talk about or write about because no one cares about this and anyone reading it is just going to say what the heck is he griping about when there are people in the world starving and getting killed in wars and usually I'm rational enough that I stop at that point but tonight, May 8 th, 2007, just over one week into Mental Health Month, it's not that I feel that I have anything important to add to the discussion, it's just that I'm in the middle of my own mental health war and I don't have anyone to talk to it about, and on top of that no one believes me that I was born screwed up by a mental disorder that lurks in the brain called clinical depression and recently it's kicked into high gear and while I feel the same, not sad or lonely but more hopeless and especially helpless, and I've lost over five pounds in the last month and sleep approximately 14 hours a day, getting up at 7 or 8, reading the paper, eating breakfast, then going back to bed for a couple of hours before getting up again and doing back exercises and then going back to bed again and finally eating lunch at 3 or 4 in the afternoon and sometimes skipping supper and eating cereal again before repeating the back exercises and going back to bed and not buying a bus card because a bus card costs more than my phone bill which I can't seem to afford at the moment and without a bus card to motivate me to travel I sit in the apartment, sometimes watching half a DVD before getting tired again and going back to bed and, between all this, I send out resumes to places where I think it's possible to get a job and actually had an offer a week ago to work 4 hours a day only it took 3-1/2 to get there and back and I really liked the guy and knew the job was a piece of cake but just couldn't tell him that I'd go to sleep on the bus and drivers have always bawled me out the few times I have gone to sleep on the bus and charged me an extra fair to take me back but at the moment I don't have the energy to stay awake more than ½ hour going and coming and in case you don't think I have clinical depression and that it's all in my head, well it is in my head but it was diagnosed by the Jefferson County Mental Health in 1992 and they began giving me Pamelor for it which did change the hopeless and helpless feeling into a deep I don't care if I am hopeless and helpless attitude and I stayed in bed even longer which was bad because my mother, who I had been living with since 1982 when my father died and she was having mental problems of her own and couldn't live alone, needed some attention because she had broke a hip which started me in a spiral that caused me to lose 40 pounds and to go to the mental health clinic in the first place where they put me on Pamelor, so I got up long enough to make sure she was up and okay and we didn't have a van coming that day or a doctor to go see, then I would go back to bed until the middle of the afternoon but, finally after getting called in and taking a State employment test which I totally screwed up and couldn't even come close to finishing because of the Pamelor, I finally applied for a job during the summer of 1993 but it had been filled but, wouldn't you know, they called me back in December and said the job was open again so I went down and, strange as things seem, found out that I had worked with the boss of this new job back at the job I got downsized from at the end of 1991 at Sherman & Howard and so I got hired to work on the weekends which really worked out swell because I could sleep most of the week and, while somewhat groggy on some weekends, could generally get though them without too many problems except for the fact that things had changed in the two years I had been off and now I was working on Windows instead of Word Perfect but within a couple of months I was clicking along and planned out my life to just work part time on the weekends instead of going back full time, so, when my mother died in the fall of 1996, I just continued working weekends for the next ten years until things gradually took an unexpected change, at least unexpected to me, and I ended up downsized and out of work, my job now obsolete after 30 years, putting me in the position I'm in now which may be the cause of the depression and, on the other hand, may not have anything to do with it as I've found out in the past when I had to drop out of college for a quarter and make it up during the summer because I got so tired that I just couldn't continue the day after day grind and now I know it was clinical depression although I went to the school psychiatrist and, while it was then in the late 50's and he didn't call it clinical depression, but he did say that I was really screwed up and would probably need professional help the rest of my life except he didn't know where I could get it and he gave me a prescription for some stuff and my mother, who had already had her bout with depression or something similar looked at it and talked to her doctor and he decided I shouldn't be taking something like whatever it was so I plodded on, studying movies, soaking up how normal and abnormal people acted in acting classes, and using techniques much like NLP developed 15 years later, proceeded on with most people not being the wiser to my mental problems, at least until they got to know me better and it helped that most people that I've made friends with were like the catatonic schizophrenic named John, who had been institutionalized twice and would probably have lived much longer if he could have stayed in the institution where his stomach cancer could have been diagnosed instead of him collapsing and dying from it on the street but I am lucky that I wasn't born a pedophile or with a gender problem even though clinical depression, when untreated as mine has been since 1993, can go into many obsessions, like I feel totally lost when I'm not working and don't even have a buck or two to buy a DVD in the pawnshop, schizophrenia which I won't even go into, or several of the common mental diseases, like you wouldn't want to talk to me on the phone on a manic day like I'm having today.


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Showing 1-4 of 4 comments
Submitted By: Ann Himel
posted on 5/23/2007 @ 11:47:55 AM
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Bob. Manic days are tough. I've wrestled with depression after the death of our daughter in 2000 and now, 7 yrs later, feel as though I am only beginning to come out of it. I want to hear that you are OK and that you do have a support system. Is there someone who can help you through this? When you're in this state, it is impossible to make clear decisions about your health plan let alone a work plan. Please let us know you have access to and are using a support system.
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Submitted By: Brendan Leonard
posted on 5/22/2007 @ 1:31:41 PM
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I wish we could give you a job here, Bob.
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Submitted By: Gladys Mercier
posted on 5/16/2007 @ 9:31:04 PM
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If this is for real, my prayers are with you. I had some depression after my husband died and it was no fun!
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Submitted By: Katherine Jerome
posted on 5/14/2007 @ 2:50:15 PM
Rated Blog Entry
I don't think I was necessarily born with a propensity for depression, but in 2000 had some very traumatic events that sent me into a spiral, so I know what you are talking about. I've been in therapy, lost my job, and even though I'm only in my 50's, I can relate to the difficulties being without a job, the constant money worries, and the complete loss of self esteem. I too, feel better when employed, but have discovered that writing stories and a blog on yourhub have helped me. Keep writing, and reaching out. I know what you are saying about antidepressants. Sometimes, you feel the same as before, you just aren't as worried that you feel that way. I am sending good thoughts your way, so please be open to receiving the energy that you deserve. I read a good book called "The Secret" that you've probably heard of that is real gung ho on the energy of the universe, and how we all fit in. I'd be happy to lend it to you, and I also have some DVD's that shouldn't be sitting idle.
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Showing 1-4 of 4 comments
CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Robert White

Lakewood , CO

Robert White has posted 216 blog entries and 26 comments since joining on 9/14/2005. Robert White 's average blog rating is 4.93.
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