Progress

I did make progress in the hospital.  One of the first nights I was there one of the alcoholics said something innocuous about tomorrow being better.  I just went off on her:  "You fucking idiot!  Tomorrow is never better!  You can say you have a day of sobriety, then a year, maybe five years of sobriety.  I never have an hour when I don't want to be dead!"  The day I was discharged a well-meaning patient (interestingly another alcoholic) said, "When I'm depressed I try to learn a new craft or get involved with helping other people."  I said nothing.  Maybe because I continued to say nothing (or did I have a deranged look in my eye?) she said, "I guess I shouldn't have tried to give you advice.  I'm sorry."  I very calmly replied, "I realized you knew absolutely nothing about depression.  You're forgiven."  But what I was thinking was "Wow, why didn't I think of that in all these 35 years.  If I'd only taken up macrame and been a Girl Scout Leader I could have been happy!"  All depressed people encounter well-meaning advice-givers fairly frequently.  My sister told me I should have said, "You have confused having a case of the blues with major clinical depression.  In fact, I've been a volunteer answering a crisis line for rape and domestic abuse victims for over twenty years and teach scrapbooking.  Too bad it does nothing to alleviate my depression."