Black Dogs

Ah, the black dogs of depression - how they haunt me.  Though they often have scared me, sometimes I just want to give in to them:  sit down in the middle of a clearing and call for them to come and do whatever it is they follow me around to do.  Will they devour me?  Maul me?  Worship me as their queen?  Take me to their lair to live with all the other Black Dogs...?



I heard the faint sound of a harmonica while I was waiting for my doctor today.  It stirred a memory.  Then I heard it again quietly in the speakers - turned right down.  I knew it to be the introduction to an old Supertramp song: School.  I first heard that song when I was in my early teens.  I loved the lyrics.  Back in real time I remembered, in the doctor's waiting room, the entire entourage of Supertramp songs.  I came home, found and dusted off a half dozen albums and played them repetitively for hours and hours.



Those songs saved me through those bleak years of teenaged angst; when I first began to recognize my particular idiosyncrasies that separated me from the world.  Those same character defects that keep me distanced to this day.

Back then, I drew apart and found the first of many short-lived soul mates (be they male or female).  I know now that that's what Dave was.  He was the first person to speak of the bleakness and frustration of life.  He didn't do it miserably, and they were only momentary comments.  I was far too young and stupid to have had anything worthwhile to add to the conversation.  But I heard him talk about it, and be sad about it.  I heard him be angry about it sometimes too.  He was one of the rare and beautiful honest ones I met.

Much later in my life I learned about the term "black dogs" but I didn't really understand what it meant.  At the time, I had a black dog:  My beautiful Axle. As I grew to understand the term, I grew to appreciate Axle's cathartic influence on it.  I could love my black dog.



I slowly learned to face my depressions head-on.  I would come to realize that they had crept up on me again.  They had slipped closer through various unguarded moments and all of a sudden I was surrounded by them, in the middle of another depressive episode.  Sometimes nothing had happened; often some drama had preceded it, but over time I became conscious enough to notice them for what they were.  I was a fairly intense person. I didn't take things lightly.  I thought a lot.  I cast cares into the future and they came back multiplied.

I learned my black dogs wouldn’t kill me; they weren’t intent on injury - they just recognized and accompanied me as kindred spirits.  Some people get guardian angels lit up like Christmas trees, I got Black Dogs with their heads down and eyes full of too much knowledge.



But they are faithful creatures and they understand me.  They mean me no harm, and I have learned to love them.