30 Years of Depression, Gone
The Ketamine Chronicles, April 2019
So the coast shapes the water, the water shapes the coasts. These are the equal yet opposite forces that combine to form the self. I believe we are, within approximate boundaries, birthed by nature and solidified by nurture, still amorphous and malleable — each wave imperceptibly alters us with each successive crash. Memories are sand washed out to sea. The maps we draw to chart our terrain, distorted by our own projection and myopia as all maps are, become the seafaring stories we tell ourselves about our selves.
Within our souls lie secrets. Secrets we keep from ourselves. Truths buried at the bottom of the sea by trauma and the tales we tell ourselves. The restless, raging ocean roars above — altered and unnerved. We float above the trenches. Sharp, stinging suffering erodes into dull, aching melancholia. Our stories become our truths. Our maps become the territory. The sea comes ashore: inevitable as change itself, yet individual as the breathing vessels of blood, brain, and bone we can’t abandon. And in the ocean of my self, this is how it all began.
For the better part of three decades, I have struggled with the twin-barreled blast of depression and anxiety. I don’t remember when it started. I don’t remember how. Around the time of the Gulf War and the Buffalo Bills’ Sisyphean…
