h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>I'm very conscious of the fact that death can come at any moment to anyone, so every goodbye could be the last one.<<

O yes. Isn't it just so amazing and wonderful to simply exist and to wake up in the morning?

Right now I'm so tired I can't imagine that I will wake up in the morning.



another thing that I try to be constantly aware of is, to paraphrase a bit of Hofstadter, that the deceased continue to exist as the memories in the brains of the survivors.

>that the deceased continue to exist as the memories in the brains of the survivors.<

I agree. But it's not only the literally deceased, but losses of all kinds in our lives. I sometimes think that depression, which I certainly suffer from a lot of the time, even if I hide it because it feels a bit cowardly to give in to it when you're supposed to not be that way, is to do with not being able to *properly digest loss.*

So maybe your friend is like that? and she just can't hide it.

It's suggested that big loss of some sort as a child, which wasn't dealt with properly at the time, in terms of mourning, can lead to lifelong problems with depression. And no matter how hard you try to be more grown up about dealing with it as an adult..about even small things to others, you just can't. And that's hard for people around you, who care about you, to deal with.

I think these lines from A.E. Houseman's, 'A Shropshire Lad' (a favourite of mine, but rather death/loss obsessed poem ), kind of sum it up for me, in a kind of general way, and the way that depression can be quite a fixed thing.

'..Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

I think with depression, the line, 'I see it shining plain'..just stays sort of *stuck*.

I'm maybe being a bit maudling, but I think it's sometimes good to speak about stuff like this, that generally in our modern, endlessly happy clappy societies, gets made sort of invisible, and almost shameful, so you just don't know where to turn to speak, or get out of it.

You're suggestion of childhood loss not dealt with properly is certainly hitting a nail on the head, although the sort of loss involved is one that I'm not sure can be properly dealt with by anyone. (she didn't go to a Residential School or hang about in the vestry with a Catholic priest, but I think you can see where this is headed . . .)

I'm not sure that she has any blue remembered hills, sadly.



I, on the other hand, seem to find myself daily prancing across those blue remembered hills because I'm fortunate to have so many of them still with me, both in memory and in the things I do each day.

>I'm not sure that she has any blue remembered hills, sadly<

Well yes, that could be why her depression is so absolute then. That's maybe a kind of depression I equally, can't understand.

I am a bit like you too. But being bipolar..just more so. Those hills are either tormenting me with their absence or overwhelming me with their presence. And I'll make no bones, it's tough.

But getting back to your friend. Is she getting proper top notch, medical treatment for her depression?

'Is she getting proper top notch, medical treatment for her depression? '


Of course not. The light bulb has to want to change.


Most of her medicine comes from Dr. Lamb (Cousin to Capt. Morgan).