Black Dog

My black dog came back late last night - The same one that Winston Churchill had.  Only he's not really a dog:  too black.  Light seems to fall into him and disappear:  black eyes in a black head and a black mouth whose black tongue curls around black teeth.  I knew he was coming - the smell of death precedes him.  He was sitting there, in the corner of my room when I woke up this morning, as if he had never left.  He's not much bother, he doesn't do anything, really, just stares at me.  And everything around me goes black.

He's always there, following me, sliding into the shadows when I turn around.  Most of the time I can only glimpse him for a moment out of the corner of my eye.  But he's patient, he knows that his time will come.  And when it does he's there, right in front of me with his cold, dead gaze.

I knew it was going to happen over New Years.  I was with close friends - with them but not with them.  I floated above and outside of the scene, as if I was one of those football cameras on wires.  Taking it in, watching them as if they were actors in some elaborate play that I had stumbled upon.  Either that or I was having a mild psychotic event.  What did they have to be happy for?  I know these people - perhaps as well as anyone - their troubles should have been enough to break them and yet there they were:  laughing like idiots.  Don't they know this is all going to end in pain and loss and death?

Of course my problems are worse.  That's what the black dog does:  makes everything black, dead - realistic, really.  "Hey, the Moneta guys are coming next week to see the solution, they're really interested!" - they're just being polite.  "Wow, you lost 12 pounds over the holidays!" - probably have cancer and just don't know it. "A friend hasn't returned my phone calls" - why would he? I suck.  "This is my 1750th blog post in the last 14 months" - what a fucking waste of time.

Home.  Can't stand to be with other people.  Can't stand to be alone.  I take a bath, try to sleep, can't.  I am so restless.  Up, out the door walking aimlessly.  Linkin Park on the ipod:  rich rockers screaming about their horrible lives - good move, Reeves.  End up at Schnucks thinking about food - hmm how about breakfast - starving to death from this damn diet - who gives a flip anyway?

I pay the lady - "Why's she looking at me like that?" Outside..."this has got to stop"...I pull the earbuds out  "Our Father who art in Heaven...", a little better.  Start thinking about writing.  Writing is a way I confess my sins, I use it to lance my soul and slowly, painfully squeeze the pus and putrefaction of my prideful, self centered depression out.  Out where my Lord and Savior can take it upon Himself.

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus my Lord.

Not even my black dog.

Heel, boy, heal.

Horrified by all of my libertarian polemics?  Here's a compilation of my non political, non economic pieces for those nights when you have insomnia.