My Journals of a Mad Mind:

Back in 1972 I began journalling my moods, thoughts, prayers, hopes, dreams, and inner life. Looking back to a journal just several years ago it is sometimes funny. Everyone gets blue once in awhile, and mostly my journals were a way of combatting those moods, so there are a lot written of blue days making my life seem like something it was not. For the most part I'm an up person. When I'm down, I do not like bringing another down with me, so I write about it. For some reason my 2003-2004 journal was out laying around in sight, and I cracked open a day in June... and for no reason, I was in a bad mood back then, and in trying to figure out why, I kind of liked this description:
"I don't know what sour and dour thoughts tramp on my deepest unconscious with heavy mud-trodden boots."

The next day back then I had considered sharing with a friend, as in my depression I hadn't kept in touch with her, but I nixed that idea, writing in the journal instead, as she would try so hard to help and said this of getting in touch with her: "...(she) would second guess my silence, but if I told her I am depressed, she'd get all flowery and empathetic or give me fifty million ways to defeat it. It's like a common cold of my brain. I will feel better in a few days."

Actually it's always reassuring when I read back a few years, as it makes me think that things are actually better now. Back then, 2003-2004, my knees still hurt. But it may have been that following autumn when I started walking with my ski poles so my upper body would be less exhausted once there was snow and I'd begin my routine of cross country skiing instead of walking. It was after that regime that I'd noticed that my knees were no longer bothering me, and the upper body exercise caused deeper breathing, my arms were stronger, and from then on I actually felt better in the winter than during the summer. That seemed opposite from the way arthritis usually affects people. When I realized that the poles helped keep my knees from getting tired, I used them year round. So, for almost 5 years I've been using ski poles and now LL Bean Trekking poles for walking and my knees are fine. So... my eroding mind and body seems to be getting better, not worse when I compare them to what I've written years ago. That's encouraging. I just hope that if I die and someone reads all my gazillion journals they don't think of me as a depressive personality. But, believe me, if I talked to you every time I felt down, you'd want me to turn to an inanimate journal to sort out my mad mind.