Monday

Depression ain't no picnic. The production of this and other 'no shit!' insights keep me from falling into a stultifying stupor, although last night I stared at the ceiling unable to move in a mini-version of the catatonic paralysis states I used to get into (for fun, in a weird, anxiety-releasing, akin-to-cutting way) in my early 20s.

Depression isn't now nor has it ever been singular and exotic. Even your doctor will refer to 'garden variety' depression, a tag that I feel should only be applied to snails.

POEM: Sylvia Plath's Mirror.

Mirror
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.

Whatever I see I swallow immediately

Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.

I am not cruel, only truthful-

The eye of the little god, four cornered.

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.

It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long

I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.

Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,

Searching my reaches for what she really is.

Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.

I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.

She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.

I am important to her. She comes and goes.

Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman

Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Having now reached my 30s, I see that the terrible fish might be lurking. Fuck that fish! I'll eat it before it eats me. Not having prolific beauty to lose, I'm perhaps less scared of the old woman than Plath was.

The words 'in me she has drowned a young girl'...reaching this age allows me to feel the irony of them. Just as Plath realises that she has spent too long searching the mirror and condemning the person she finds there, who is now dead and gone, I realise this too.

So: you've drowned (i.e. killed) the innocent, non-self-loathing you that perhaps once existed. It's a tragedy because killing young girls is wrong, especially if there's no clear motive. It's also banal - but does that make it less of a tragedy? If evil can be banal, can tragedy also?