I’m back!  And it’s not prompted by the earthquake.

It’s been six months since my last post.  Hard to believe.  I was having a ball blogging and I got a kick out of having a small but loyal group of followers who cried at my sentimental posts, laughed at my quirky ones and tolerated my lefty political rants.

And then I didn’t. 

About a year ago I started slowing down.  More and more I asked myself, “Why bother?  What difference does it make?”  I wrote less, did less in general.  The clouds started gathering and nothing particularly mattered at all.  Everything got harder and gave me less satisfaction.  By February I was doing little more than the basics.  I worked, slept a lot and watched way too much television.

Then about a week ago, I got the urge to buy some fun socks.  It was a small thing, but it was a sign to me.  I hadn’t thought about anything like that in months.  It meant the skies were clearing – for a while.

That’s what Depression – capital D – is for me.  Random lows and highs that come and go with no warning that may last for days or months.  I’ve had it before and I expect I’ll have it again.

I think my friends will be surprised to read this – I hope they will.  I’ve worked hard to keep it from being obvious.  I am an actor, after all.  And I learned a long time ago that no one wants to be around a sad sack for long.  Even I don’t.  So the show must go on.

There’s no point in trying to dump a lifetime of dealing with Depression into a single blog post.  Who would read all that blah blah blah, anyway?  I’m just going to touch on a few things that I’ve learned.  Some have been already been said in the past couple of weeks and some that I think are new:

There likely isn’t a trigger to Depression.  In fact, there’s usually no connection between real Depression and actual events.  When I’m in the depths, I could win $100 million and while I would know it was a wonderful thing, it would do nothing at all to alter my mood.

Trying to look on the bright side or count our blessings hurt more than they help.  It isn’t that depressed people don’t know what’s good in their lives, it’s that that doesn’t matter.  It sounds harsh, I know.  It’s not meant to be.  It’s sad.  We know that we should be able to feel better and we can’t.  Then we’re not just sad people, we’re bad people – ungrateful and selfish and weak.  See?  Not helpful.

Most Depressed people do not get to the point that Robin Williams reached – which helps them to remain invisible.  Suicide, or the attempt at it, often seems to be the only way to convince the world that they’re not just blue.  There are a lot more people who are just debilitated enough to derail their lives because they don’t have the strength to get out of bed or take a class or apply for a new job.

Depression isn’t a constant state.  Robin Williams is a great example of that.  Depressed people can perform, whether on stage or in social or professional situations on a sort of auto-pilot.  They know how they’re supposed to act and they do.  That doesn’t mean they won’t have to go home and hide away or sleep for 12, 18 or 24 hours to recuperate from the effort.

Depression with a big D is a completely different animal than depression with a little D.  We really do need a new name for it to avoid the minimization and confusion, something catchy like the “mean reds” that Holly Golightly talked about in “Breakfast at Tifany’s.”  We can’t afford to have this screwed up by the bleeding heart types who’ll give it a useless moniker like “unexpected and erratic dire emotional distress.”

Pills aren’t a magical answer and neither is therapy.  ‘Nuff said.

So that’s my take on the big D.  I hope it’s helpful to someone.

A lot of people who’ve written on Depression lately have also said that they’ve learned to welcome the experience because it has made them stronger in some way.  I haven’t reached that point yet.  To me it’s just a monumental pain in the ass.  For now I’m just going to enjoy a bright sunny sky and buy some fun socks.