Father and Son, and Depression

I've just embarked on taking a new drug in an attempt to get my migraines under some sort of control (more about that here) and the notes that came with it say I may notice a "change in your mood or experience feelings of depression".

Later it goes on to say this affects between 1 in 10 and 1 in 100 users so it's not that common but it got me thinking about the only time in my life when I think I was genuinely depressed.

There were good reasons for it: a long term relationship had just ended, my Land Rover had been written off in a fire, I'd had an accident on my bicycle which left me with cracked ribs the week before Christmas, I spent Christmas day at home on my own in some pain, and there were other factors too which I won't recount here as the people involved are still about. Suffice it to say that January, never my favourite month, found me in a very black mood¹.

Although, like most people I suspect, I do have the odd black day it doesn't last but this was different and it carried on for several weeks.

In that time I discovered several things.

One was that I think I came to appreciate some of the attractions of anorexia as lost my appetite and found that being hungry actually seemed to make me feel better in a kind of black and twisted way.

The second and perhaps the oddest is that I developed a maudlin fascination with one song: a cover version of Cat Steven's "Father and Son" by Francis Dunnery. This is pretty obscure stuff, I can't find it on YouTube so you'll have to accept my description of it as an English accented re-working of the Steven's classic.

I used to play it over and over and sob my eyes out.

Listening to it again tonight I can sort of see why, but it's a huge stretch to see it's relevance to where I was then.

Funny thing depression. Let's not go there.

1. Thankfully it didn't last long: in February I met Beth and everything changed for the better. Reader, I married her ;-)