The Black Dog

Posted on

That’s what Winston Churchill called depression. Have been in the pangs of it today, and the weather matched my mood. I couldn’t think of anything to write for you all about a gray, chilly day.

So here, of course, I am writing to you about not being able to write to you. I love it when I turn into a conundrum.

But much as I hate admitting that the Black Dog has power over me, one has to face facts.

Just cheered myself up by reading for an hour or so to Peter from his assigned biography of Winston Churchill (and which mentions the Black Dog): The Last Lion : Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932.

I view this all as a reward for my having had to read to him last semester about Hitler and Stalin. Tonight’s reading was mostly about his father’s career in Parliament, and some about Winston’s own career at Harrow. He doesn’t seem to have been a wonderfully likeable boy, and he and I wouldn’t have been best friends.

I mean, if I had gone to Harrow at the time, which I didn’t, seeing as I’m female, and born a hundred or so years too late.

Oh well. See what happens when I can’t think of what to write to you?

4 thoughts on “The Black Dog”

  3. Monday 7th Feb. My 50th birthday.

    I was assertive with my mother for the first time, even standing upright and raising my voice!

    My mother wass shocked and fled my flat muttering incoherntly because this IS the first time this has happened. I retire to my bedroom and wep inconsolably for an hour.

    The reason.. I have had to retire from a decent job in the National assembly for Wales (civil service) after 34 years. a job I disliked for all but the last 6 when I got into computers.
    I tried to leave to do something else but my mum who believes unwaveringly in her own wisdom would just tell me no and i would be too frightened to do so.

    1986 first diagnosed as showing signs of depression. did nothing about it . too frightened to cross mum. 07/02/05 attack of the black dogs. swamped by depression…this night is my 6th without sleep. feel the need to write a book on depression..working titles so far : my family and other animals – with due thanks to Gerald Durrell, Depression, the causes, the effect and how to claw your way back and finally walking the black dog and finding your way home.

    All I did with my mum was to say I wasn’t up to decorating her bathroom and she said it was an excuse.

    Compulsory retirement from work, medication enough to make you rattle, pet psychiatrist, pet psychologist….some excuse.

    but after all the years of torment I may have found the source of my probs by accident – my lack of assertiveness and the build of frustration which inevitably followed…maybe

    ps before depression I was a rally driver. photographer, hot-air balloonist and all round decent chap. He’s gone, I miss him. But to all potential depression sufferers and black dog walkers please try to identify the source of your probs, don’t let the profesionals always suggest a source which you may just spend the rest of your life blaming.

    We all must live until we die, what we do with our lives is the important bit

    I hope that made sense

Comments are closed.