Two years on

It's been two years since the first Living with Dysthymia post. While everything has changed, nothing has changed in that it's still there, as always, and like me, a little worse for wear from time and experience. That's the nature of life, as each of us lives and experiences it.

The posts during this period, which can be found here, are more momentary ramblings. A thought like eating cereal where you eat a bite which triggers a thought which melds into an idea and grows into a essay written as thought. I'm a stream of consciousness writer, I write what I think at the moment, and just let the images of words pour out from the picture in my mind.

You see I don't write as writers write. I'm a visual person. I see writing. And idea grows into a full thought with paragraphs containing sentences. I see the paragraphs and I write. And if the thought comes from the sadness in my mind, then it's seen and expressed as such. Sometimes the picture, like this essay and the photo above, is foggy at best, and shades of gray everywhere.

This is where my Dysthymia is for the most part, as it has been most of my life. From the time I was a child and hated being around other people to today where I like living and working alone interacting with people when and where I want or have to as life dictates.

And retirement has actually helped because I can spend days thinking and writing about my Dysthymia and not pretending to be happy at work. I can be myself in the privacy of my life, free to explore the breadth and depth of my Dysthymia when it worsens. I don't take drugs for my Dysthymia.

I've only slightly followed the research into anti-depressants over the years, I've tried to use Taoism, running, and photography to search and express my Dysthymia as I think and feel. They're not anti-depressants, but expressions of it. I don't try to dampen or change it, but explore and examine it.

I've found when I do that, I find my mind expanding into new areas of thought and feelings and find creativity I would have under drug therapy. In the twilight and sometimes darkness of Dysthymia, the light becomes more visible and intense, and often into the shadows of my mind where the light doesn't penetrate unless you go there. Somewhere drugs won't take you.

And so two years on, and my life now nearly 60 years on, the road is still there, wandering wherever it goes with whatever light I carry, and the hope the end isn't obvious or slow, but there a moment before I didn't know it existed. It's about just living and knowing death will happen whenever it does.