A week with two entries? That was almost unuusal but then both were short and not very upbeat. I was beginning to fall back into a student routine but it was still a struggle. The breaks to go to California and move with the family had put me on a mixture of the 'old track' and the newer one. which left me in a kind of limbo. I was mostly glad I had changed my major styudy area but otherwise Ii was still feeling stuck. This fall was an awkward rerun of the prior year and very little seemed to be resolved or renewed in a positive way. Until decades later, I really did not know the whys and wherefores that kept me teetering almost lifelong on the edge of depression.
October 23, 1969, Wednesday
I've been terribly depressed lately. The last two days I felt frumpy and it seemed like everything went wrong. Nothing really bad happened but it was just blah. I am getting lonelier and lonelier for masculine company. It is a physical hunger but even more emotional. A little later than this last year it hit me and I finally found Bud and Dale or maybe they found me. So I suppose someone will turn up. Just lately I don't have much faith in anything, though. I'm just in a sluimp and I will pull out oof it but it is pretty discouraging. I can't find any enthusiasm for study. I probably blew my Sociology test because I really didn't study at all. I almost don't care and yet I panic when the moment of truth comes and I am supposed to perform. I need a man, I really do. Not a boy but a man, a real one. I suppose the folks would tell me "Wait and grow up" just as they did for a good decade while they never tried to help me get from twelve to twenty in a social sense. Now I am slightly used courtesy of three transportation men and my teeth are rotting out and I'm tired and sick and digusted and discouraged and lonely.
October 26, 1969, Friday
For some weird reason I'm in a good mood today after having been in the throes of the glooms all week. Don't ask me why because I swear I haven't got the slightest idea. Maybe 'cause it is the last day of my "youth" since at sunset I will be wearing store bought teeth. It is only one, a middle one tha had to be filled in, but the ideaof it was huge. I got 87% on the Sociology test and I was no end of surprised, believe you me. That's a good high two anyway, so maybe I can bring it up to a one later. We got out early so I'm sitting here on a planter in the sunshine and sort of daydreaming, Here it is Friday again already. The time just flies. The pre-law meeting yesterday with the dean of the Albuquerque (UofNM) law school got me all enthused about the idea. I would no doubt meet all sorts of fellows, anyway. Probably lots more than I would as a teaching assistant, especially at NAU! I also saw a notice about graduate study at UNM (Las Cruces) too. I am sure I'll have to write and inveestigate that as well. Too close to the folks, though...Hmmmm. No, I am NOT going back to that trap. Regardless!!
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Since this is short, here is a verse from a later time that almost fits. Reading it, I realize how often I walked the edge of depression for so much of my life. Only in the last decade have I begun to understand the whys and wherefores of what I had to overcome and heal from to make things work better. Better now, yet? I am not sure.
Self-Pity (c1980)
Depression is my comrade who walks a step behind
Holding a shadow over me to darken and make blind.
Melpomene* is my sister, with her downcast face,
And as her understudy, I could easily fill her place.
Do I fear to be happy or strive to mourn and grieve
That when joy wants to find me I flee and won’t believe?
And why do I love unwisely, (unwisely but oh, so well)
So it must stay a secret that I should never tell?
Tragedy is my homestead where I have staked my claim.
I dwell there growing thistle for the beast I cannot tame.
*Melpomene is the muse of tragedy
Picture: I borrowed this image from a forgotten source long ago. I called her The Goddess of Depression and so often felt myself under that dark cloud, soaked with the torrent of struggles and strife. I see the selfishness of that now but dark moods can be an addiction, even a shelter. Such are hard to ween one's self awayfrom.
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