I use this blog as a, well, as a blog. Sort of tracking my mental processes. But I don't bother to chart it on a grid. I'll just leaf through the pages sometimes, and remind myself of how I was feeling. The attentive reader will have noticed a generally dark tone, when the subject moves away from matters external.
I've alluded to it before I suppose. But tonight I've decided that there must be some actual chemical imbalance, something organic, in my brain. I felt the depression drop down on me like a physical weight. As I've said, I've mentioned it before. I've often been able to link it to some apparent cause. Not tonight. I can't find a pattern. Makes me think it's more than just a mood.
Medication? Just not my style. That may be stupid, but on the other hand meds don't cure anything. Symptom control would be nice, though. I've already called it post traumatic stress disorder. Maybe it's the same thing.
I've been looking at Nova shows on Youtube. Saw something on epigenetics. Fascinating. A mother mouse who licks her pups changes the expression of their genes, so that grandchildren are affected. We knew something like that with cats, who activate the hypothalamus of kittens by licking them -- so they're emotionally sane. Did I ever talk about Harlow's monkeys here? Babies raised with only wire manikins for mothers grow up insane; if the manikins are covered with soft cloth the babies grow up less insane. Now it seems that Lamarck was right -- genetics is environmental, and not merely in a mutational sense.
It's all more complex than I want to go into now. My point is me. Of course it is. I'm just looking for a way out of the trap. A cure, rather than coverup.
Had a long discussion today with a young girl who seemed to think that a prayer language -- the sort that preaches only to one's own soul -- is not an actual language. I suggested that noises without meaning or grammar are not an element of any language. God does not babble. It was a challenging idea to her. Maybe angels don't follow the same rules? But logos is logos, and every language we know of starts out with a highly ordered structure, and then deteriorates over time. Mutation, in other words, is always degenerative. Prayer babbling could only be self-stim -- like what autistic people do. My point?
Something to do with miracles. The way that Jesus healed -- say, a women bent over by an evil spirit for eighteen years, whom he healed. Poof. Is that a gift for today? If so, it's a lot less common than the public babbling some people seem to suppose is a gift. Of course there's grace. Is there the kind that changes our actual lives, rather than something as lofty as our acceptability before God? I'd like some of that. In a form other than medication.
But grace, the healing kind, shows up if it does imperceptibly. We realize with a start that we feel different. A wound has stopped hurting, and we notice the absence of the pain. How nice that would be.
Ah well. My usual meandering. Groping through the darkness. At such times, one might tumble down a precipice. Something to do with light, then. Something to do with what's under baskets or on high lampstands.
I woke up this morning with a sense of urgency, for the first time ever. I realized that I'm pretty much ruined, financially, have no assets, and in fifteen years I'll be retirement age. What went wrong. I was virtually destroyed, some years ago. Career, reputation, standing in society. Family. What a wreck. What a fool. It's another reason why I don't believe in meds. I did it to myself.
So there's a lot on my mind. Does God heal anything other than feelings? Or is it all about babbling in a closet, and calling it faith, and a gift. I don't know. I know that God doesn't answer to me. I wish he'd answer me, though. In the affirmative. But Job must have been edified, in the end. And he started out blameless. I've done it to myself.
Bah blah blah. Babbling. Sorry.
J
5 comments:
"Had a long discussion today with a young girl who seemed to think that a prayer language -- the sort that preaches only to one's own soul -- is not an actual language."
Right there. That's the key.
Talking to the young. About these things, by those who know about them and can explain them to a hungry soul.
You need to do it more and so do I.
It may not cure the depression, in fact, it may increase it (He who increases in knowlegde, increases in sorrow - Solomon) but it makes a lot more sense to do than anything else I can think of.
Considering what's coming.
You're a wise man, chuck e. boy.
So what would it hurt to try some meds? The worse that would happen is that you would pee them out - after filtering through your liver, of course.
I'm not a med person. I would be saying the same things with the same resistance. John Flavel said, "Is it not enough that God is so gracious as to do what thou desirest: must thou be so impudent as to expect him to do it in the way which thou prescribest?"
Peace.
b
I realized that I'm pretty much ruined, financially, have no assets, and in fifteen years I'll be retirement age.
while the loss of wealth will have an emotional impact that cannot be alleviated dealing with the concept of "retirement age" in a more constructive manner might help somewhat.
"retirement age" as a concept used to mean "too decrepit to work anymore". the fact that Americans have been acclimated to thinking of it as "spending 20 years in indolence" at the end of your life is absurd. something like that is possible, on a maintainable basis, only for the very wealthy.
it's interesting to think about how we got to the place we're at today. prior to WW2 we were in the Great Depression and only the super rich could even think about something like that. during WW2, everyone who could, worked. it wasn't until ~1950 that people actually started thinking that they "deserved" retirement.
All milestones are symbolic. I'll never retire. But there are benchmarks and measures of success -- if we didn't care what others thought, we wouldn't be social animals.
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