Heavy

A couple things I've been thinking upon over the past couple weeks:

1.) I love NPR and PRI. Seriously, I've been listening to my fav National Public Radio shows while working in my window-less office a lot lately, and it makes my whole day. All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, This American Life. I love you all.



2.) I am extremely excited to get back to my lovely city of Chicago at the end of this week. I feel like I've been forced to try and love it where I'm currently living. I mean, I've been the one forcing it; I've been looking for all the things I love about living up North. There are reasons. But I was emailing a friend of a friend from Chicago this week about Harry Potter. I thought he wasn't a fan, but turns out he was. He's a big movie - buff over all, and in emailing back and forth I realize I miss that. It may seem shallow, but I don't think it is. (Name that movie "Dave and Barry and I decided awhile ago that it's not what you are like, but what you like that makes a good relationship. Call me shallow, but it's the fucking truth " - hint, I've blogged about it before, and that quote may not be totally accurate) Up north, I just haven't found friends who enjoy pop culture, or really, I think, culture in general, as much as I do. I've been thinking of where I was in my life before I left the city, and I was really just discovering it. Going to free Latin music shows and then out to bars every week, going to movies, going to a new restaurant and meeting new people at parties all the time. I miss that. I miss friends who like the same thing that I do. Bands, movies, book-stores. This week I went to the movies by myself. I was excited for tonight because I had a friend who was going to go to the movies with me, but I just got a text that said "Can we go to the movies tomorrow? I need to go drink heavily". And it's not that I'm against heavy drinking, now that I think if it, I could use a stiff drink myself. But I miss the days of when drowning your sorrows in drinking heavily also meant listening to a band you love or eating a large bag of over-priced popcorn.



3.) I realize as well, that I was seriously depressed over the past year. I feel bad, and like apologizing to people in my life. I don't know exactly when it started, but I realize over the course of the past year I started sleeping more and more, I fell out of touch with friends, and over-all was not myself. The past couple weeks have been hard, but at least I feel like I've found myself again. A couple weeks ago a new friend pointed out during a conversation that "the thing about depression is that you don't really realize how depressed you were, until your not depressed any more. When you're in it, you don't even really know it."

I very much feel that way now. I'm not in it now, but I realize I was in deep in it for a extended period of time, and thank you so much to those friends who have kept up with me none-the-less.