Eventually I left school, got more serious about writing, got a better boyfriend, and pulled myself out of that first episode, but depression is something I've struggled with ever since. Sometimes medication helps, sometimes not. Testosterone has helped more than any psychiatric drug, but it is far from a magic bullet, especially when situational factors (poverty, my mom's illness, the hype surrounding the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina) intrude. Right now I should be lighting candles for my clients. Over the past eighteen months, I've built my candle-and-root business out of nothing into a going concern. I'm proud of it and don't want to screw it up, and I don't want to disappoint my clients. But the principle behind setting lights is sympathetic magic, and I worry that depression will contaminate my candles. If I can't get rid of the depression, I need to learn to build barriers to keep that from happening.
I can't see myself starting to keep a regular blog again, at least not at the moment, but I wanted to put this somewhere I could keep track of it. Mostly I like the ephemerality of Facebook, but once in a great while I still want to point to something and say, "Here's what I think about this."
