I'll say this to say that:
I am in a great place relative to other parts of my 67 years. I am married to the best woman I've ever known. My bills are paid. I, then have the wonderful trifecta of a roof over my head, someone wonderful to love and spend my life with, and good stuff to eat. I can remember a few times things weren't this way.
I no longer play out. I only miss it until I think of rounding the gear up and going out the door at 7:30 or 8 to be on a bandstand working by 9, then I realize I simply can't face it all any more. Proof for me I walked away at the right time. But I love flapping my gums on TB (we all need a laugh these days . . . .) and poking around with the Squiers here at home: No last call, no requests, no drunks or stoners, no fellow travelers with problems.
I've been ridiculously healthy most of my life. I feel a few symptoms of becoming an Old Man, but fewer than most.
So for all these things, I am well and truly blessed and grateful.
However:
I have fought depression eternally from my teenage years. I've no doubt it's made serious dents in my life, and at times I have suffered like a dog, and while I have better stretches of time, the biggest part is worse, and it's robbed me of so many things I could have done. I have spent large lengths of my life suffering like a dog inside. It is, indeed, the Blooze You Can't Looze.
I have developed the strength to get knocked down often, and I get up every time. I just always wonder what my life would have been without this process, but realize I would have never developed the strength and more than a little gallows humor about it. Like a submarine's commanding officer, I consider it a succesful patrol as long as the number of dives is always equal to the number of surfacings. So far, for these many years, I'm still even.
For far too many reasons to enumerate here, treatment is a sketchy, often ineffective, and inexact. You can take any number of tests and scans from the neck down to find a tumor, find high blood pressure, diabetes, COVID, on and on and on. Psychological or Psychiatric treatment is about where surgery was at the time of the Civil War. In other words, almost useless despite the many times I've made inroads into finding a way out. I can't take a scan or blood test to find the depression. Talking therapy doesn't work for me. I keep looking for a useable treatment plan to help me through this.
I've never found one. So I live with this, better sometimes than others.
I've said these things to appeal to all of you for the one part of treating folks like me better that all of you can easily become a part of:
It's very common for folks with conditions or diseases that are under successful maintenance to lead normal lives. Nobody on your job looks at you as if you have three eyes and horns if they know you're diabetic, have high blood pressure, etc.
It's not that way for folks battling their mental health. The prevailing sentiment out there is you're either 'normal' (whatever the hell that is) or you're crazy('pssst, he's going to a SHRINK!!!!).
This is completely wrong, limiting, shaming, and dangerous. That cultural outlook has got to change for millions of people just like me. There are lots of us out here.
So, please, DON'T be that guy.