“Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? – Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Dear Depression,

It’s five o’clock somewhere, isn’t it?

And when you don’t have anywhere to turn, then dammit, bring on the medicine. I suppose I’m just tired, but then again I’m too numb to feel tired. I feel as though I’m floating in a black suffocating vortex of debilitating weariness. Except that floating is too ethereal and too pretty a word to describe the hell I’m feeling. I guess I do feel. At least enough to feel…hopeless.

Hopeless. Tired. Numb. Numb. Tired. Hopeless. (Repeat)

Oh, its only three o’clock?

God, am I not listening? Or are you silent? I feel I can’t talk or hear you. Am I so wrapped up in my selfish desires that I can’t hear you? Are you not talking, or am I not listening? I feel so desolate, so depressed, so alone. I want to be John – not David! Your beloved –  not a man after your own heart. A friend, not an artist. I don’t want this freakin’ “restore to me the joy of my salvation” crap. I want to sit next to you at supper and lean on your shoulder. But no!!! No!

It’s five o’clock somewhere, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Is it true that the mystery of God’s presence can only be touched by a deep awareness of his absence? Is it really true that in the center of my longing for the absent God I discover his embrace? Is it true that absence makes the heart grow fonder? Is it true that filling my body with “the five o’clock medicine”, with chemicals, with too much food, too much excitement, too much sex (is that possible?), too much shopping, too much…of anything, will keep me from moving toward the mystery of your absence? Is it true that in listening carefully to my longings, I can hear God call out to me?

Is it true, like the Christian radio stations and books say, that every story has a happy ending? That you can have a terribly depressing experience in the first and second verse, but the third verse magically solves all the problems? Is it true that depression is just old fashioned sin, pure and simple? That I just need to “get right with God” and everything will be “my best life now” and that I really can “become a better me?” Is it true that the only reason I’m not healthy, rich and famous is because I haven’t “claimed it in Jesus name?”

Or does life just suck sometimes?

Is it Friday or Sunday? Sunday or Friday? Death or life? Life or death?

Is it simply coincidence that Jesus died around happy hour?

Randy