Micromanaging Melancholy

Yes, give up hope all ye who enter here. I persist in my depression that began three weeks ago, give or take a few mixed states.

I have settled into my negative personality. I imagine explanations for every blow of Kathleen's criticism, though it rarely comes--I am nevertheless prepared for that iron rain.

Everyone ignores me, I am invisible. I sit on the deck and read Keats by the redwoods and wish to become insensate in their towering excellence, their ramrod-straight striving for the sun without apology.

Love Keats' "Ode to Melancholy," one of the best poems I know that tries to make sense out of manic-depression. "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode to a Grecian Urn" skirt the same subject but not so personally.

Kathleen is happy. She tells me I am negative and boring. I wholeheartedly agree while in this state. I am grateful for her company but have no right to expect anything more than a grudging tolerance for my existence. She tells me she loves me but I know better; that's the transparent habit of compassion she's developed for a nobody of no consequence.

I am too tired to catch her in the lie; after all, what difference does it make if I cannot imagine being loved, much less feel love?

It's amazing how very bad Keats was until the last years of his life. The transformation is quick and unforeseen. Beforehand I would never have imagined him becoming a first rate poet, rather relegated as a minor Romantic hack. Only five of all his belabored sonnets are worth saving. Then come "St. Agnes" and the incredible Odes. Go figure.

Dead at 25. Lucky bastard. I see my last twenty years going by in a "poof" of forgettable gray negatives of nothing some fools might mistake for a life.
So much for the happy ramblings of the depressed.

NOTE: None of the above should be construed as strictly true or even what the writer believes, rather a sour exhalation of melancholic vapors.


Thine in Despondency,

Anonymous