EXISTENTIAL DEPRESSION

I worry. I worry, a lot. Especially now that I am firmly in my sixties, both my parents have passed away, my mother only recently so, and I am three years from retiring.

My children are in their thirties and they live in another country. Okay, a bit melodramatic there. I live here in the States and my children live in Canada about twelve hours away. Seems like twelve light years, though.

I have stepchildren. Yeah, I am re-married.

The first marriage was not so good and ended acrimoniously. And yes, I do have regrets about that because it caused my children and I to be estranged. It scarred them. I have tried to make amends but I will always feel guilty. It was my fault.

My second marriage was fraught with drama resulting from the situation surrounding my first marriage. I had baggage. A lot of baggage.

But this marriage, thirteen years now, will last! We’ve been through the worst and we’ve come out stronger. My wife is my best friend, my lover, my confidant and we have a great relationship. As I said, we’ve been through the wars and we’ve survived with aplomb! I love her to bits!

We are two strong personalities, so we respect each other’s space. I cherish her strength of character and her wisdom and her love.

And like I said, I have two stepchildren, although I think of the bond as much stronger than that…

I also have a grandson! I suppose I am the wee bairn’s step-grandad, but there it is!

Nevertheless, I am suffering with existential depression. You know, that depression that manifests when one comes face to face with, death, isolation, freedom and meaninglessness?


As to death, well, I am still mourning my mother, but I know that no one lives forever, we will all die. I miss our talks.

I am not concerned about my own death. I am not frightened about it. Of course, I do want to the chance to complete a few more things before I leave this world.

However, I do fear the manner of my death. I don’t want to be helpless, to be a burden, to not have a quality of life and have to be kept alive by machines to assuage anyone’s conscience. I do wish to die with my dignity, such as it is, well intact.

But truthfully, I have had a good run. I have met and, in some cases, exceeded my goals. I have had the opportunity to make a life and I have done so, in two countries, and on my terms without a safety net.

Nevertheless, the aging process, the fact of seeing my body deteriorate that gives me pause!

I am shorter and heavier than ever I was before! I was a martial artist for thirty-eight years and the discipline and training I undertook was, for me, extreme.

I was never into any other sports. And to see all the work I had done to achieve some merit of physical prowess being undone by the injuries I incurred during training depresses me. Without those injuries, I would still be involved in martial arts.

The added insult of getting wrinkled, going grey (thankfully I still have my hair and I keep it long to flaunt my good fortune and remind myself of who I am), getting fatter and slower and weaker, these things do prey on me.

So, not death per se, but certainly the dying process affects me and is part of what makes up my existential depression.

Being the black sheep of my family, I feel isolated from them, and this feeling has deepened since the passing of my mother four months ago now.

This feeling of isolation has nothing to do with lack of love or affection but is more due to our differing primal beliefs, those things all of us hold dear, essential, general beliefs, which we examine daily and from which is derived our personalities.

The Diaspora that is my family, we are spread over six countries, no doubt has had an influence on my feelings of isolation.


Freedom. My freedom, I feel, is being assailed by the fact I am not yet retired and have not nor will I have, the where withal to do the things I would like to do.

Going to work everyday for me is torture! I certainly empathize with poor Sisyphus!

I am constantly complaining about having to work. I have done what I can to mitigate my circumstance by stating I will retire at sixty-five and will not go another year! Bugger the government and my union regulations!

I will not be able to travel. I may never sip wine on the Left Bank in Paris where the writers of the “Lost Generation,” Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald, Eliot, Pound, Joyce, et al, wrote, drank, fought and loved. Nor will I drink wine at a villa in Tuscany. I will never see Florence, the birthplace of the renaissance, nor will I be able to scream at the Roman gods for their treatment of my Celtic ancestors in the Coliseum.

I mourn my lack of freedom to do these things.

As to meaninglessness, well, I never thought for a moment there was any meaning to life other than what I consciously and of my own volition attributed to it. Nor have I ever thought that the universe at large was concerned about me. The universe is callously indifferent to my desires and fears. Therefore, I have always given my own meaning to my life.

However, despite my convictions, I do wonder if surviving family members and friends will attribute any sense of gravitas to the deeds I found meaningful.

I don’t believe I wasted my time. I may not have been the best, but I exceeded my own goals or at the very least, I  met every goal I ever set for myself.

Here I am, in the throes of an existential depression that has lasted over four months. The reasons for it, I have enumerated but how do I cope, how do I get through the days?

As Kierkegaard said, “life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” And so, I take one day at a time and I squeeze what I am able from that day. I try to experience something positive, learn something new and to appreciate what is going on around me at the time.

I play music and enjoy making recordings of ambient soundscapes of my own composition. I enjoy writing novels. And I enjoy my blog for it forces me to think and to write down what it is I am experiencing.

That my loved ones, one and all, near and far, are all doing well, and are loved and cherished by those they love warms my heart.

And for every disturbing, disheartening, hateful, spiteful and negative image or story I encounter reading the news, I search and embrace the positive, the heart-warming, the comforting stories that don’t get the same airplay or print space but are nevertheless extant.

I am hopeful that will be enough. I am hopeful this existential depression will dissipate soon. I think it will.