I'm a Turtle

People without depression don't understand that when you've been clinically depressed since you were a little kid, and the majority of your thought processes for the last 20 years have usually been something like "I wonder if anybody would miss me if I went into the woods and hung myself, or laid down on the highway," or "why am I invisible," that over time it colors your personality.

Or, rather, it sucks the color out of it.

Being depressed my entire life has ensured that I am not a type-A personality. I'm not a hard-charger. I plod.

People can't wrap their heads around it. I had a back-and-forth with someone last night that had me ready to go outside and split logs because I simply could not seem to convey this to them. "You need to remove the words 'can't' and 'won't' from your vocabulary!" No, I've just been so deep in my own head for so long that I know what I'm capable of and what I'm not, and denial doesn't make that self-understanding go away.

This isn't to say that I'm lazy. Or that I have no ambition. Or that I don't deserve the things that I have ambition for.

It's that after the anti-depressants I got in Herat, now that I'm no longer generally depressed (outside of the occasional dip in morale), I operate on a lower, slower plane than many people. I don't wear bowties because I hate looking ridiculous. I don't wear bright colors because they bother me. Candy-red and mustard-yellow shirts and pants make my ass itch. I function on a different, more somber, more introspective plane.

I want things. I go get things. I've written five books in as many years, and none of them are under 100,000 words. I just don't do it at 90 miles an hour like that guy in the question-mark suit in the informercials about government money. I'm not very good at jogging, but I can walk all day. I tried to jog to town the other day in 95-degree heat and ended up walking most of it. I came back staggering like a drunk with blisters on my feet, but I came back.

I vibrate at a lower frequency. I rumble. I lumber. I'm a turtle. I never stop. I may not get there today, but I will always get there.