looking back

Looking at whirlingboy's family photographs has set me reeling. This happens when I visit other people's families. If they project the contented happiness that these photographs do, it is like a stabbing in my own heart. And this sounds like the ultimate in self-pity. But some people come from a happy place; others come from a dark place. The facts speak for themselves. I will not elaborate out of consideration for people who might someday read this. But it is interesting that today I was thinking, obsessively, about what causes my depression. My first doctor's explanation was, that in addition to genetic predisposition, early traumatic loss is fundamental in causing depression. What was lost, for me, is not clear, at least not in the earliest part of my life; but ever since I can remember I have been plagued by a kind of existential sadness and loneliness. I now know, in thinking deeply about this, and in years of exploration, many of the causes of these feelings. And then, throughout my lifetime, things have piled up to the point where now I fear being left more than anything else. As a boy, I would vomit and freak out in the morning walking to school because I was convinced that no one was going to pick me up, that I would be abandoned. My father's reaction to my fear was to lay a leather strap on the table next to my place at breakfast. Then when I was about eight years old, one day he didn't show up to pick my brother and I up after Sunday school. He had been hit by a car and very badly hurt. We wandered through the parking lot (which seemed huge and teeming with hulking cars to me) in the cold snow until a family friend came to take us. I was in a panic, my heart pounding. I remember it vividly. So something happened to make me fear this; and although I have come a very long way, this terror lies in my heart. Oh how I wish I were not like this. And I work so hard--exhausting myself--to keep it all together a lot of the time. My brother and I joke now, calling our family home "Bleak House." It's pretty amazing that I am not a quivering wreck twenty-four/seven, actually.