“Depression really does feel like something hounding and snapping at you. It’s as though you’ve been set upon by something vicious you can’t see.” — Emily White

Learning to Live with Solitude is a book of Emily’s and somehow I became acquainted with the above quote.

I also remember being told depression was a result of repressed anger. That too makes sense. I believe depression can be a seasonal thing and I say that with no authority.

My first episode was birthed processing out of Vietnam, a common garden for some soldiers. The psych ward at the old VA medical clinic was my first touch of treatment locked in a small cell like room.

A young nurse would stop to talk with me occasionally. I remember asking her to take me away. She didn’t.

There was an aging psychiatrist I met with a couple of times that resembled Mark Twain and he didn’t treat me like I was “crazy.”

When I later worked as a therapist at Gerard a psychiatrist there was acquainted with the “Mark Twain” guy.

I had further bouts along the way and was introduced to a therapist in Riverside when I was doing some college work in San Bernadino when I slipped away. He looked like somebody too, but somebody I couldn’t remember. He was the psychiatrist that introduced me to Lithium.

“Loneliness is related to depression, but it’s not the same thing.” Cacioppo said. “If you see loneliness as just an aspect of depression — and that’s really how it’s conceived then it doesn’t require any special attention.”

“We are fundamentally a social species.” Cacioppo said. “If you take other people away, we don’t do well.”

I don’t think Mello is depressed but I don’t think she likes me to interrupt when she is stalking the cats, one female and one male. I think she prefers the female Echo.

She was collected by our daughter when she was a student at the university where Lydia was invited to a lecture by a visiting Bohemian from the old country. I greeted him in Czech.

He welcomed that.