Melancholy
My therapist did a very thorough psychological evaluation; the battery of questions she asked took us over 2 appointments to move through. The questions she asked brought about moments that I hadn’t given a thought to in decades. Was I ever depressed as a child? Was I sexual at a young age? Did people around me seem uncomfortable with my energy? Yes, yes and yes.
We then began to delve into my past and the patterns of depression and mania started to emerge. It was as if she was peeling back the layers of my life and my actions, suggesting that I take a look at things that I had pushed down years earlier. The things that we looked at, in the beginning of therapy revolved around me, not necessarily things that had happened to me.
Topics of our sessions contained what I currently did, said and thought about and what I had done, said and thought about when I was younger. The parallels were amazing.
For instance, I can remember lying under the Christmas tree with the glow from the light strands keeping me company as I quietly cried to myself. I was about 9 at the time. During a season when children generally are in a heightened mode of excitement, I would lay under the tree and move through the sadness that was in my mind.
Even before this, when I lived in a duplex with my Mom, with my Grandmother in the apartment below us, I looked for solitude and “hid” under a huge pine tree in the side yard. (Sorry Mom, for all the sap in my long hair)
Melancholy and I were friends, and always have been.