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“In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant.  My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known -- no wonder, then, that I return the love.”

S Kierkegaard

I was mussing the other day while a gruesome headache held me hostage.  Remember Proust and his remembrance of things past?  I do!  Every time I let my mind wander, I think of my own olfactory reverie around a freshly baked Madeleine.  It triggers a secret wish.  I want to slip through the imaginary door between reality and dreams and write my thoughts, release reminiscences of things past, bring in images of people I knew and loved.

 My writing has been called melancholic and I never tried making it look any other way. I often travel back in time the way Marcel Proust did albeit not with the same literary brilliance. I tailor story after story while I follow the scent of time past, rebuild the ladder of emotions on which I climbed or plummeted in accordance with the delicate fabric of my thoughts at the time. Some people are born with inherited astuteness about the world and the way they fit in it .  Others labor for it.  I am among those who work hard and suffer—carrying heartbreak and the weight of years as scars on my spirit.

I am pretty sure I suffered from depression from the time I was very young.  There are the classic routes of coping with it like therapy and medication.  For me writing was always the silver lining in handling a condition otherwise perceived as a sign of weakness, failure and a step back on the evolution ladder.  (which in retrospect looks like the equivalent of a social “wedgie.”)

As it turns out, despite of the melancholia in the background, I am a very selfish writer.  I always wrote for myself first and foremost.  Writing is my way of expressing not only my imagination, my feelings but is also my way of recapturing memories, spinning them around and setting them free through my stories.

Sometimes the past seems so far away it does not even feel like mine anymore.  I look back at my life and as I recognize bits and pieces, I become inspired.  From the time, I was a kid in my parents’ house and completely engulfed in books to the time I opened my heart to love, marriage, parenthood and ruthless interaction with life in general destiny carried me on paths I guide my writing on now.  

You get hurt, you get happy, you help people along the way, people help you, and all this time you build the tapestry of your existence, the foundation of your story...