Get out of Depression Fast! Act Now!

I finally got a laptop back from Hewlett Packard, two and a half months after I sent it in my original laptop for repairs. Mine is still being kept hostage for reasons unbeknownst to me but this brand new one, chock full o’ useless software as Muvee autoProducer 6.0 and Vongo, sure is helping me forget about the inconvenience of not being able to do any writing at home whatsoever for half a semester. On with the very dated material:

I had a fantastic summer. Remarkably I was enrolled four classes including an intensive ASL and an intensive stats class plus student teaching and I managed a social life. A better social life than all the summers I didn't spend taking four classes and student teaching, actually. One night, dancing drunk in a cage made from a chain-link fence at a gay teen club called Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness (correct spelling), I had a thought: dame mas gasolina. Wait, that’s a lyric from the Daddy Yankee song that was playing. Shit, um, I don’t really remember the exact thought right now but I do know it had something to do with simultaneously recognizing that some part of me had felt unbelievably, uncontrollably sad up until that moment and that this part was suddenly shrinking with every 1-2 step.

I left that cage a changed person, my friends. I woke up the next morning to write a short story about the brightness of the sun in Arizona as a metaphor for my sudden and unavoidable enlightenment. The title was a play on “Everything is Illuminated” and it was god awful but it was the first time I entertained the idea of getting up early voluntarily to do something creative in years. And that, right there, was depression. Not wanting to get out of bed for days after I graduated was depression. Crying for a week straight last year was depression. Making myself sick to the point where I needed to be hospitalized for a weekend in New York and not telling anyone was depression. And also fucking ridiculous. That unbelievable, uncontrollable sadness was depression and for some reason it took me up until this summer to label it as such.

Right now, I’m not going to discuss where it came from, where it went, or if it was warranted because frankly, I don’t care. It was and now it is not . Yes, say it with me, this summer a teen club DJ changed my life. (Along with some girl power, if you’ll allow yet another stupid song title reference.)

There may be future entries with this Get Out of Depression Fast theme but for now back to regularly scheduled irreverence.