Dylan, part I

Some of my favourite Bob Dylan lyrics (there is a point to this):

‘The rain man gave me two cures, and he said “Jump right in”
The first was Texas medicine, the second just railroad gin
But like a fool I mixed them, and it strangled up my mind
Now people just get uglier, and I have no sense of time”

About a year and a half ago, while vacillating over whether or not to remain in graduate school, a friend of mine told me that my supervisor had been telling people (many as it turns out, including some I don’t know) that I was depressed. Well, suffice to say, I am no longer a graduate student, and I never again spoke face-to-face with my now former supervisor. Internally, my decision to leave school had already been made when I found out about what he had said; I suppose it just made the act of actually leaving that much easier. The interesting thing is this: upon reflection, it wasn’t that he thought that I was depressed that so infuriated me; it was that he decided to announce his diagnosis of me to so many people without discussing the situation with me first. A gigantic absence of tact.

When I was in my late teens, my father told me out of the blue that he had been (and still does to this day) taking anti-depressants for many years. And what I remember most about the conversation was that he was so non-chalant about the fact that he was on medication. Apparently, he visits a therapist monthly for a very short session, ostensibly for the sole purpose of continuing his prescription. He told me that taking the drug ‘allows’ or ‘helps’ him to be the person that he wants to be. Something along those lines anyways; and I have heard other people who take anti-depressants refer to their effects in a similar manner.

More to come . . .