It has occurred to me today that tomorrow will likely just be more of the same.  I want nothing I can obtain.  Nothing is incomplete.  No adventure awaits, and I care for none.  Most of the day will be spent fulfilling trifling obligations to Bill, usually in perfect silence because I forget to turn on any music.  There are no movies I care to see.  There will be no questions of import to be answered.  I'll get hungry and have to eat.  I have no battle plans to draw or love to give.  I'll experience neither fear nor hope. All longing has been sucked out of me. I'll fight off sleep during the day and lie awake waiting for it at night,.  I'm not really sad.  I'm just living.  Just existing.  If this is not fertile ground for the fruit of depression, then it is something unnamed and even worse.

Dysthymia, depression, melancholy, destructive introspection, malaise. There is no name for what I feel. Perhaps someone will, someday, invent one. I think of my own death and it does not impress me. It means nothing. None of us will ever understand, if understanding is to be had at all. And in the end, none of it will have mattered. The billions upon billions of lives and loves and deaths will not the universe change. My sin is in recognizing this truth. And your sin is in not.

Following is another response to an email I received last night.

"I know that my brain is not  serving me properly right now.  I don't want to add to Mary's anxiety or Rebecca's problems or my own anxiety by living there.  Besides, I don't think I can say goodbye to Mary without losing it completely, and I don't think she will understand.  I'm gone now and can just stay gone.

Most people have a vision of what their immediate futures are likely to be.  They have plans.  They have things they want to do.

Only today did I realize that I see nothing but emptiness after the 14th.  I've given it my best shot, and it wasn't good enough.  My pie-in-the-sky plans are just that.  The reality is that my life  will just be a continuing fight and downhill slide, especially if I fork over the money for ECT.  So I've got about 5 days to figure it out.  I know you want to help.  I know I probably need help.  But I also know that this is the big turning point for me, and that I will either make the turn on my own or go off the cliff.  In the long view, it doesn't matter, anyway.  You know it doesn't.  As you are so fond of pointing out: such are the conditions that prevail.

Right now, Tucson does not appear in my recipe.  Or maybe I just haven't read far enough.  But the thought of returning there now gives me the willies and takes me back to places I don't want to go. I'm actively looking for a place cheap enough to rent.  I even looked in Tucson.  I'm making inquiries about ECT in other countries. And If I can find cheaper ECT somewhere and last long enough and can afford the flight there and back, I'll probably go that way.  If I don't, well, the cost of keeping depression at bay is just too steep, and after 40 years of it, I'm burned out.  I'd rather have a long sleep and someone else spend the money on other things.

Thanks for all you've done.  I've told my brother but no one else; not even Rebecca.  Oh, I dread that.  I may have to arrange for my grandson or Rebecca to put the few things I need (passport, auto records, recent mail, printer?) into a box and mail them if I end up renting somewhere for a while.  May even make a pass by the gallery to clear out the easel and chair and such, though I don't plan to use them again for some time, if at all.  If I don't, they'll be yours to use, dispose of, or give away.  I'll leave the keys and exit through the crash-bar door.

If I die, my will gives the Corporation and all its assets to Robin, forgives the $100K debt from Rebecca, leaves my life insurance to Stephenie and her kids, and the rest, I think, after some money to Robin's kids, goes into some kind of trust for Mary's future care.  Just got that all signed a week before coming up there.  Guess I should get those papers, too.

I have no grand plan to kill myself.  I have no grand plans at all.  So we'll all just have to wait and see what happens.  Whatever it turns out to be, I'll be just as surprised as anyone else.  I'm not frantic.  I'm doing my best to think things through.  I'm not much of anything, really, but remain determined to do the best that I can.  I've never asked more of others and will not now ask more of myself.

I never was one to burn my bridges behind me, but my feet seem to set a new blaze to this one with every step I take.  Maybe that just happens naturally when you have enough years under your belt.

Yes, I know this not normal.  I'm not normal.  But I AM rational."

Five days.

Some of you may know that i underwent a series of 8 ECT treatments about a year and a half ago. Afterward, though a bit slowly for my tastes, I experienced great relief from depression. That ended suddenly in August of 2007. I chose to try drugs again because of the cost of ECT, I was pleased to discover that therapeutic amounts of Effexor XR proved to lighten my depression. This lasted until about a week and a half ago. Since I'm house-sittting for a friend, I could not up my dosage from the recommended 300 mg/day to 375, but had to go up to 450.I had planned to go back to ECT if /when the Effexor became ineffective. Being away from Tucson when the Effexor quit helping has made things more difficult.

Following is a recent email I sent to a friend.

"I've been thinking very hard the past few days on what to do.  Few people want to be around me because I'm depressed and fixated on my own personal sense of tragedy.  So I'm lonely most of the time.  I don't like lonely.  I have no hobbies, and the things that do interest me I can no longer afford.  I've tried to find something else.  I have failed.  I have no home.  I've always had a home, but no more.  I hated renting.  I am depressed again and have increased my dosage ofEffexor to 450 mg/day.  I was not going to do that, but I'm up here and my psychiatrist is down there and the next stop was going to be
ECT.    And that will take weeks or months to set up.  And it may or may not work.  I've asked Bill to ask his doctor friends inArgentina how much ECT costs down there.

I don't want to see Mary again.  I cannot face saying goodbye.  I don't want her to think that I don't love her.  I don't want to live in her house.  I still love her.  I need to make a living, but I can't find a job.  I don't want to paint unless I get enough to really change my life, and at the current rate, I'd have to paint until I'm 90.  I've looked for teaching jobs.  Even interviewed.  The depression is not helpful in this area either.  So, I spend my money of ECT and be a homeless house-sitter with no prospects for a better life? With whom do I share my life if I'm a house-sitter?  Besides, I smoke.

So, why am I continuing to live?

What good is it?  Every day is just a little worse than the last one.  Right now, it is just so that Bill's dogs will be fed and watered.  I do not plan to see Mary again.  I don't even know whether I'll be coming back to Tucson at all.  I have used every idea I've been able to come up with and have failed.  I hurt inside psychically all the time.  I have to take a handful of drugs to go to sleep.  I have to take more drugs to go back to sleep after a few hours.  Is this a life worth living?  I'm thinking not.  I'm thinking that I'm REALLY worth more dead than alive.  The longer I live, the less I'll be worth.I hate being this way.  I go into town every day and try to make a new friend.  But I'm nothing but my past.  They say; are you married? I say no.  They say "What do you do?"  I say nothing.  They ask me what I enjoy... I say nothing.

So can't a guy get tired of it all?  I get an "A" for being a good man but no credit for the course.

I had a good life.  Why do I have to suffer more every day and watch it fall apart and become nothing but memories, fading?

I spend most all day thinking and rethinking these thoughts and trying to hold things together.  No straight-jacket for me.  I'd kill anyone who tried that, or they'd have to kill me trying.

So, bad things happen to good people all the time.  Why am I not allowed to just cash in my chips?  I don't want to come back to Tucson.  I want to go where
no one will find me.  People say"Find Jesus!" and "Use Herbs!" and "Stop eating chocolate!" and "Stop smoking!" and "Meditate!" and "Exercise!" and "Drink Snake Oil!"

Well fuck them all.  I'll do what I decide is best.  Oh, you can talk things over with Steve.  Steve can talk with you. Robin can talk with Zoe´.  I can talk with myself  People say  "Oh, you'd never be a burden for me."  Right.  I know how that works, and I'm not going there.

Sorry.  Just talking to myself again.

So now I'm going to take enough pills to go to sleep and at about 3 AM I'll take some more to go to sleep again.  And then I'll get up and feed the dogs and go through it all again.  Bill is supposed to get back on the 14th or so.  Don't know where i'll go then or what I'll do, but I doubt that I'll be coming back to Tucson.  I've already started looking for a really cheap place to rent.  All I need is a refrigerator and a lamp and another inflatable bed.  Then I'll go somewhere with my list of logins and passwords and untangle myself from the WWW and cancel my disability insurance and my health insurance.  I may or may not tell anyone where I am.

Or maybe Bill will have an answer good enough to hold me together for a while.  Or maybe I'll call my psychiatrist tomorrow.  Or not.   You know how they say "Everything happens for a reason"?  Well, in MY brain, malfunctioning though it may be, that is bullshit.

Fuck it.  I'm tired of thinking today, and I know I'll just be doing the same thing tomorrow.  This is the pits."