Ford and depression

There are many unhappy Torontonians today, at least in my neck of the woods; I presume they're happy about him in some godforsaken part of the city. (Sorry, Laurel, but even though you live out there, you're completely different.) On the streets of Cabbagetown this afternoon and at the last farmer's market of the year, all the talk was full of dismay. One nice neighbour even said, "I feel guilty saying it, but he's so fat, maybe he'll have a heart attack." Imagine, we are driven to that! And Craig, who stands in his yard on a busy corner and knows everyone, says he's going to put a sign on his fence: "CABBAGETOWN SECEDES."

We'll form the Municipality of Cabbagetown, he said.

You'll be our mayor, Craig, I said.

Had an interesting experience recently; a student wrote a heartrending piece about depression, a beautifully written evocation of how her despair and lack of will to live are affecting her life. We discussed it as literature but couldn't help also dealing with its subject matter; I went on and on about how I am a profoundly positive person in love with life and simply cannot understand depression ... and then I remembered. My God, when my marriage was is trouble and my soul was confused, miserable, terrified, I couldn't sleep for months and sometimes was wracked with fear. I called it "the pit," that hole in the centre of my being into which I could easily fall.

Finally I went to see a therapist, thinking I'd see her once or twice and be fine. Seven years later, we finished - and that included five years of psychoanalysis, four times a week. Four times a week for five years (it was a part-time job, with the summer off), and then two years to get started and wind down, for me to be fixed and turn into the profoundly positive person in love with life I am today. It was worth every agonizing hour and the many thousands spent, no question about it; a great blessing. But it's funny that when I read the piece about depression, I had no notion that this subject could have anything to do with me. How soon they forget.

If I dwell on the reality of Rob Ford, however, it all may just come back, so this positive person will just try not to think about it.