3 minute read
When the Black Dog Comes Home
When the Black Dog Comes Home
Finding the sunlight in the dark seasons
By Ed Cullen
As the morning sun finds the bedroom blinds, I awake with a sense of dread. The feeling of foreboding is slowly washed away by the first cup of coffee, as I lay in bed embracing the new day.
When I was a child, an aunt tipped me to the melancholy, her word, that runs in our family. As she had, I learned to live with this low-grade sadness. We didn’t call it depression, and we wouldn’t talk about free-float ing anxiety for another twenty years.
Winston Churchill called depression his black dog. That’s a good name for what millions of us feel on lovely fall days and at holiday time. Black dog conveys a sense of brooding that follows at our heels. But phantom dogs—even big, black ones—can be friendly and protective.
We called our family’s passing affliction “the bots,” a case of mental flu.
Over time, I’ve learned to recognize the cycle. If I am feeling flat, I rely on the comfort of routine to get me through the day. If I am feeling more than flat, I attack work at hand or make up work to distract myself. The bots are best managed out of doors.
I’ve come to see my black dog as a companion— sometimes lying in a puddle of sunlight in an other wise dark room. Other times, the big, woolly creature wants to shake off the doldrums and play. In this part of the cycle, I write, seek out people, and find hope in new things.
These thoughts are offered as an observation, not a cure. The bots are one thing. Depression that lasts months or years is a serious illness. It requires more.
Often, we feel down for a reason. These last years have been cause for debilitating anxiety. With COVID, we wait for the other shoe to drop. A Russian madman kills civilians in their homes, schools, churches, hospitals, and supermarkets. What an unwanted bonus of evil he is in a world beset with homelessness, persecution, and starvation.
Awaking with the bots, I know I need to get outside. The constellation Orion hangs high in the dark sky as I walk to the end of the driveway. The newspaper in its dew-wet, plastic bag assures me that death-tipped missiles slept in their silos as I slept in my bed.
I awake to dread. A little after sunrise, I am sowing lettuce seed.