Have I mentioned I'm depressed?

Have I?

No?

Okay, well, I'm depressed.

It runs in my family. My dad had it, his father probably had it.

I took Zoloft for awhile. It helped me know what it's like to not be depressed. I was in my forties before I discovered that. But between insurance and pharmacies, I had trouble keeping a steady supply. Henry Kissinger couldn't have negotiated that settlement.

So now I just accept that I am going to have spells of depression, and I'm in one now. Have been since Friday.

I know I'm not the cheeriest person under normal circumstances, but this is even worse. I apologize for not acting, looking and being like everyone else. I really tried for a long time, but I couldn't keep it up.

Sometimes, though, when I feel depressed, it's like settling into an old easy chair that isn't especially comfortable, but is at least familiar and reassuring. When I'm depressed, I know the terrain on which I'm walking, and I feel kind of safe here because it's my terrain, and no one else can take it from me.

I live in the constant fear that someone will find a way to take my home, my job and everything else. After all, I'm supposed to be camped out under an overpass somewhere with all the other people who aren't exactly like society at large. I'm too tall, too pseudo-intellectual, too messy, too overweight, too goofy-looking, too eccentric, too unattractive.

But even if they take every physical thing from me, they can't take depression. That's mine, assholes, and you can't have it.

I wonder if that's why so many street people are mentally ill. It's the one thing they have that no one resents them having, no one thinks they don't deserve and that no one will try to take from them. So, that's where they take refuge. Maybe it feels to them like the safest place they can be.

I hate humans right now. Which is okay, because the feeling is mostly mutual.