The Cure for Depression

 I suffer from depression. Actually, no, I don’t, I’m just moody. Then again, you could say that I’m not moody at all, but that rather, I am enlightened as to how miserable the world is, so therefore, I am neither depressed nor moody. In fact, I am an enlightened soul who realises that being bitter and twisted is actually the most realistic way to view this world.

Let’s face it, by the time you reach middle age you’ve probably been cheated, robbed, disappointed, sick, broke, bereaved, bereft, hurt, betrayed, stabbed in the back and taken for a ride at least once. You may also realise that you have become your mother, your father, your schoolteacher, the bin man an imbecile, all rolled into one.

Funnily enough, most days I am blissfully unaware of all this tragedy and sorrow that fills the world. Most days I am too busy looking for a pair of socks or going down to the shops to get milk. But then you get a day that there’s plenty of milk and all your socks match and you start wondering what to do with yourself and then you ask yourself what life is all about.

That’s when I start to get cantankerous. Because when you have milk and matching socks in abundance, you begin to ask yourself if it’s really worth spending your days chasing same?

Then you ask what else could you be doing that might be better, and you realise it doesn’t matter whether you’re scouring the toilet bowl or writing the definitive Irish novel. In the end, they only matter to you anyway, and you’ll die and a month after that the designer outfit you worked your ass off for, both physically and metaphorically, will be on sale for tuppence in a Charity Shop, and worse; nobody will want it. And despite realising that whatever you do, ever, is a waste of time, you also feel that this may not be true, and that perhaps you should have done other things with your life to now, but you didn’t, so here you are at middle age, wondering what the hell excuse you have for creating the ozone hole with your farts.

You slouch on the sofa eating chocolate and drinking wine, because after all, it doesn’t matter that you’re ass is the size of Roscommon, and this is the closest you’ll ever get to being in a Bukowski novel.

But then one of the kids comes in and says we have no milk and that they want some cereal because we have no lunch or dinner either. That’s when you get in the car and go to the shops for milk, and then you’re busy again, and you forget that you suffer from depression, or do you?