FIRST, I WAS nearly killed in a tornado which killed a hundred sixty one of my fellow joplin missourians. then, after three weeks digging through rubble in scorching heat, I decided to comfort myself by increasing my already considerable exercise regimen. Overdoing it, I severely strained a hamstring, which kept me off the running trail for almost year, and seemed to exacerbate my depression, rather than alleviate it which i had intended with exercise.
Nothing helped. I got out of shape, and started spending much of my time in bed, never finding a comfortable position for my leg, never finding curcease of my sorrow for my lost neighbors and town. The depression started affecting my behavior. i noticed that my short term memory, never very good since about the age of twenty five, had altogether vanished. Also, I began to suffer from "analysis paralysis; I couldn't make even the simplest decisions.
I wondered whether this might have something to do with my horribly wrong decision to go jogging while the tornado sirens were sounding. A fear of consequences, perhaps? At the supermarket, I wandered aimlessly around the store, unable to decide what to buy, staring at the shelves interminably, putting things in my basket, taking them back out, putting them back in. Am i a vegetarian, or am i a carnivore? Flip a coin! It doesn't matter! Sometimes I walked out of the store realizing i had accidently shoplifted; -a small item of food had ended up in my pocket, in the midst of indecisive limbo.
Fragments of poems stuck in my mind. One by
Bertolt Brecht, on the left, and one by theodore roethke, below
I make friends with people. And I wear a derby
On my head, as others do. I say; they are strangely
stinking animals. And I say; no matter, I am to. - B Brecht
dark, dark my light, and darker my desire
My soul, like some heat maddened
summer fly, keeps buzzing at the sill.
Which I is I? A fallen man, I climb out
of my fear. The mind enters itself, and
God, the mind, and One is One, free
In the tearing wind.
---Theodore Roethke
Finally, a good psychiatrist told me that, no I am not a bi ploar mainc depressive, i just had a little post traumatic stress disorder, and besides that, a healthy dose of depression,which i should regard as a perfectly normal reaction to some of life's unavoidably unfortunate circumstances. I would get over it. Life would go on, pleasantly, productively , as ever. Mental injuries, and hamstring injuries, do, at length, heal. At least I learned one valuable lesson; no matter how often tornado sirens sound meaninglessly throughout the course of one's life, always assume that this time this one is not meaningless.
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