If it's true that depression distorts your thinking in cartoonish ways, it's just as true that getting better means you're in for some forehead-slapping. As in, "Why the HELL didn't I think of that sooner?" The most obvious things are not apparent when you're depressed--and so later, when you do see them, you feel like the world's biggest doofus, because they were so obvious. See, the thing is, I've been telling myself for about six months now that I need to get back to work but I can't think of a thing to write about--my brain pan was as arid and desolate as the Gobi Desert--no hope whatsoever--and then last night it came to me what I need to be working on, and of course it was the most obvious thing in the world.
It's my friend Meghan Caughey. The very first friend I ever had, in fact. Boon companion of my kindergarten days, whose mother was one of my mother's dearest friends, who (like me) has traveled a long and sometimes desolate path through mental illness--hers a lot worse than mine--and has come out the other side knowing some things about art, and overcoming hardship. How we lost touch for so many years and then found each other again about 10 years ago, and it was as if we had never been separated. How I went out to see her last fall, and we met in the airport in Eugene, Oregon and just stood there and looked at each other for the longest time, and she kept saying, "I see your mother. I see your mother," in wonderment, as she looked in my face, and the tears just rolled down her cheeks and mine.
People who read this, go check out her website. Here is a person who has earned the right to say something, who has something important to say. What a distance we go.