I’m depressed. No, I mean really, I’m depressed. This isn’t a statement of how I’m feeling at the moment, it’s a feeling of how my life is playing out. But that statement is misleading, because I have a lot of stuff to be proud of and to be happy about in life. But I celebrate life while being completely depressed, weird, right?

Why?

That’s the big question of millions of people across the globe. Why, among all the souls on this planet do I get the pleasure of walking under a dark rain cloud while traversing the earth in search of a happy, pleasurable life?

I believe I can give you an exact moment when I realized I was depressed in life. My mother passed away from cancer when I was 10 years old. At the time I had no idea how that would affect me for the rest of my life, I just knew Mother’s Day would be weird. But looking back on it now, I realize I started spending a lot less time outside since she left. I played every sport I could growing up, as a matter of fact I acquired Osgood-Schlatter’s Disease because of my involvement with sports coinciding with my growth spurts. It caused my knees to grow in with a bump just below the knee cap and my knees would hurt occasionally. I remember when I was told my mother passed away I had a full baseball uniform on and I was waiting by the window for my friend’s mom to pick me up for the game. After I was told, my cousins had to pull me away from the door because I wanted to go play ball and not deal with the reality of life.

The funny thing, and I mean literally and figuratively, is that I picked up my love of comedy and I started my 25 + years of comedy career because I hated it when people looked at me and whispered ‘there goes that kid whose Mom died’. It happened all the time and I would make some silly face or make a fart noise and I’d get a laugh and it would all be forgotten. I was the very definition of a ‘sad clown’.

Does being depressed mean I’m constantly down or sad? No, of course not, but there’s no cure, so it will always be lurking in the background. It’s become an old friend now, someone I’m familiar with, so I’m not shocked by it but I’m not so welcoming to it, I don’t invite it for dinner.

I think the term ‘depressed’ is so overused today, a lot of people roll their eyes to it, as if it’s an allergy or it’s something I say when I need an excuse. Believe me when I say this, If I could get rid of it, I would have a long time ago. I get so tired of not feeling normal and not being able to just pick myself up and move on.

I have a step-son who is allergic to peanuts among other things and I am blown away by how many people make fun of peanut allergy sufferers. It’s almost an affront to their lives so they talk about how stupid nut allergies have become. Never really thinking that someone could be so allergic that they could die. If you don’t know about what someone is suffering just know that there’s always going to be people labeling themselves something that they aren’t but don’t think there’s not people who actually suffer from it.

The question I’ve had burning in my head for a long time is why I’ve been given this depressive state. I truly believe their is a reason for everything and that the Master Creator will use this for a positive reason. Could it be that I was meant to write this short blog and that you were meant to read it? Right now? Or is there something else waiting for my tales of depression.

I found out the other day that scientist are using the poison from a wasp sting to develop new cancer drugs. For most of my life I always had the question, why did our creator place wasps in our world? Surely nothing good can come from a wasp sting.

I will now ask, why am I depressed? And wait to see the answer. It’s there and I plan to see it in my lifetime.

Douglas Goodrich