The Book of Jorb

Okay, this is the profile of my now from then struggle with clinical depression. I've told the story to various professionals a number of times, so it has lost part of its emotional twang for me.

I'm writing this so that you may relate to what I've been through. Even if you have better reasons for the cause of your gloom, you may still glean some knowledge from the articles I promote for Suite 101. Give a man a fish, they say, and he'll eat for a day. Show a man how to fish, he can eat whenever the fish are biting (as you must know, the fish don't always bite).

Before I start, since I'm letting you into my little shop of curios and daydreams, I need to k-bosh some natural, low-lying presumptions.

First, don't be surprised if I fail to caricature my experiences like Alanis Morrissette would because:

a) I am not Alanis Morrissette

b) I still don't feel very swell

Second, what you've learned about depression is applicable to my current situation, but I'd rather you thought of me as someone that can't be classified in the textbooks, even if it isn't true.

I've moved out of the Hunger Artist phase and would like very much to be respected as an average citizen capable of communicating a message to you without a knee-jerk reference to what you may have learned in school. No offense intended, it just makes me feel like I'm full of formaldehyde.

Okay, now I can start. Although the onset of my depression can't be pinpointed to an exact time, I began to change in ways that contradicted what my childhood friends and I used to believe before I was sixteen. For instance, we all used to want to be rich and marry women like Cindy Crawford. But I lost all my drive for that stuff and soon enough I stopped buying brand name clothes, settled for anything black.

I started to hang around with a new crowd of people. They thought that carving their lover's initials into their forearms, without antiseptic or ink, was cool. And it was! We talked about how screwed up the world was. And it is! We skipped school, walked to my place and drank coffee and smoked hash. We didn't give a damn about anything.

Back then, I found a certain comfort in pessimism and despair. I fell in love with a girl

Go To Page: 1 2 3 4 5