Shawna, the last thing I think any of us are doing is sitting at home making ourselves worse. Most, or all, of the people reading this blog — and the dude writing it — are recovering from manic depression, or searching for a treatment. No one wants to be so depressed they have to stay away from the people they care about. If you think you might have manic depression, or are severely depressed, you should find a doctor and tell them about it… even your family doctor. If you are feeling suicidal or like you want to harm yourself, you need to tell your teachers and/or principal right away. It’s perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed about.

The poem is actually a small part of a song by a group called King Crimson, if you’ve got a computer around I highly recommend downloading it…

I would take clinical depression any day of the week. At least with that I know what the hell to expect day in and day out and I know that some days for me will be better than others.

I know what you mean though about trying to reach out though… it seems that over the past couple of months I’ve been slowly reaching out trying to get more people to chat with through blogs and comments and it has just propagated itself like a virus. Part of it could be because I’m staying on a hypomanic phase. I haven’t spent that much time with my new therapy team to make that assessment yet.

Right now I am hosting 6 regular blogs, 2 photo blogs, posting on 3 communities, hosting a forum, on and on… You get the gist. It’s all very obsessive for me right now, but at least I don’t feel like I am coming down for a crash anytime soon thankfully.

But the Clinical Depressions have definite causes. They have endings — just like every individual depression caused by manic depression has an ending — but the endings for the CD’s take actual work and effort and action. Mostly because You have to accept shit happened for Reasons and were Caused by Things out of your control. Or in your control. Or because of things You did. Which means following all sorts of threads as there are very rarely single causes to tragedies, and as those tragedies occur they mark many other threads of our lives so that those threads must also be fixed.

Nurse Myra, for example, has gone through months of depression caused by an actual and very tragic series of events and is working hard to move past the depression. On the other hand I spent days, weeks or months at a time depressed because of bipolar depression, but ‘all I did’ was suffer through them. They went away mostly on their own. Eventually, to get them under control, ‘all I had to do’ was accept I couldn’t defeat manic depression by myself and start taking some pills… I’m being a little facetious here, but it’s what I do when I’m working though an idea.

All of that said, of the two I think I’d rather have the Clinical Depressions… not the causes, of course, but natural depressions can eventually be overcome. The bipolar depressions will keep coming until you get properly treated… which can mean decades of self-loathing, isolation and meaningless and empty debates as to their causes and cures.