A Splintered Mind

I love how my daughter uses her creativity to deal with depression. I was listening to her song the other night and was struck by these lyrics: What's this weight on your chest? Why is it hard to get dressed? Fighting chemicals inside your head. Always up till midnight All you got is moonlight Makes you wish you had the sun instead I am deeply saddened that my daughter has to struggle with the pull of depression like I do. When I think of all the genes I wanted to pass along to her, I wish this particular one had missed its trajectory. Yet we can't do much about the hand that life deals us. How I wish I could just hit “reset” and get a new deck dealt to me and my children, as if life could be managed like a Solitaire game that is going badly. At a dead end and don't know where to turn? Start over. So easy. Instead, we need to rise above our circumstances, even if only by a fraction. I have known the darkest, most oppressive waves of depression. I have opened my eyes in the...

“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” — Matthew 5:44 I don't live this law literally enough. I live it in spirit, and I live it for the most part, but the hard parts are where I fail. My struggles with the law of forgiveness get in the way with fully obeying this teaching of Christ's. I'm having a laugh at myself this morning because I follow this principle on a case-by-case basis, which completely misses the point! The arrogant physician, the rude clerk, the homicidal driver all take a piece out of me without me once praying for them or blessing them. For years, I didn't manage my anger. For some reason, I believed it to be an uncontrollable symptom of adult ADHD. I couldn't help it. That's just how ADHD was, right? Well, it is a defining criteria, but I was completely wrong that it couldn't be managed. When my anger was damaging my relationship with m...

I used to change my profile pic monthly—even weekly! It's not that I thought I had a face that people needed to see more of. By taking frequent profile pics, I displayed my creativity. In fact, it was important to me that people knew I was creative. Now I don't care in the slightest. I've been asking myself if this is because I have grown up, if it is because I've become bored, or if it is for another, more insidious reason: depression. I can trace a lot of my listlessness to my divorce. After all, I stopped playing my instruments at that time. The shrill sound of pennywhistles, recorders, and other flageolets echoing around my empty apartment just made me more depressed, so I put them away for a while. I eventually started playing them again, but not until three years had passed. It reminds me of when I first began ticking back in 1992. I was a freelance illustrator at the time, but I couldn't draw with my arms flailing about. I was so depressed, I treated my art s...

I'm sitting here in Salt Lake City Cemetery, discretely off to the side, while the Brownie is on a field trip to learn Pioneer history, self-reliance, and some ghost stories to boot. Her class takes the public transit to go on their field trips in order to prepare them for life. They learn how to catch a bus, pay their fare, then walk to their destination. This means that Daddy can't interfere so that she learns to rely on herself, but I am secretly here just in case she has a seizure. It's easy chaperone work. I kept myself busy in my car writing, reading news, and practicing my pennywhislte. Then I got the news my friend, Rick Walton, had passed away this morning. Tears are blurring my screen as I type this. I am so glad I had a chance to know Rick . You may not have heard of him. He was a prolific children's book author, specializing in picture books. What a bright, creative mind he had! It pains me to speak of him in the past tense now. I was just holding his hand a...