Life, the Universe and the Melancholic

In Disney's 1953 Peter Pan movie, one part of the plot is Captain Hook seeking revenge for Peter Pan cutting off his hand. His hand is eaten by a crocodile who evidently has also eaten a clock. The crocodile, having had a taste of Hook, seeks out to devour the rest of the Captain, with the clock still ticking away inside him. Captain Hook is tortured by incessant tick tocking whenever the crocodile is close by and he descends into abject fear at the sight of the beast. This premise is a good analogy of my experience over the last 12 months. The abject fear of myself and my mind. Evaluating reality from unreality, fact from fiction. And when I would feel out of reality, I would panic. The tick tocking descended to get me. The beast about to devour me.  "I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it? Time is chasing after all of us."  Time  indeed felt like it was chasing me, like my time was almost up . Now ,  over 12 months on, it all seems so far away. Year

I have always been prone to depression. Well I wouldn't have called it that, I just feel sad most of the time. I remember in high school my band teacher said I was prone to melancholy. I quite liked the ring to that, so melancholy and sadness just hung about like a dark cloud. In a way I see beauty in the darkness. I have a journal full of sad poetry, I read it back and it is of weird comfort. My teenage angsty sadness turned into intense adult melancholy as each year progressed. Some of it embarrassing unrequited love. Still some of it embarrassing unrequited love and other things. Always through out it, I just wanted someone to see me, to be able to hold space for it all, to see that much of my existence was spent alone in the dark being sad and that it was okay. Much of the time the intensity of how I experienced the world and expressed it, was too much for many. I was often told directly and indirectly that I was attention seeking, too dependent and clingy, weird and sad. I was