This was written six months after major brain surgery. I now know that this is a major risk factor for depression. At this time I took it that my body was reacting with exhaustion to trauma. Retrospectively, the truth is that what I was probably experiencing was a combination of both. It’s amazing how long a black dog can circle you unnoticed despite impeding your walk and causing you to stumble. One thing that strikes me as a shame is that there was then, perhaps there is now – no active follow-up of people who had major brain surgery to screen for depression. The statistics for it are actually quite high and warrant it – I will have to look them up again to add them in here.
Anyway, this is Vanishing Days
I’d pack up all I have to disappear
I’d run a thousand miles away from here
To abandon this life with all its confusion
To flee reality and resist the illusion –
I long to be free from all complications
From all of those everyday expectations
Where nobody has any knowledge of me
How I long from this everyday life just to flee.
But where would I go?
And how would I know –
That I’d run far enough to be free?
For no matter where I’d begun –
No matter where I might run –
Every place I could go I’d find me.
livingwithablackdog 