I haven’t posted on my blog in a while and for good reason – I have been quite busy searching for answers at the bottom of vodka bottles again. Sadly, this is an annual event for me and it typically begins around Thanksgiving and ends just after New Year’s. I’d like to think of myself as a young Charlie furiously searching through Wonka Bars for the golden ticket, but it probably looks much more like an infant being asked to solve a Where’s Waldo book, complete with all of the slobbering, incoherent mumbling and falling down one might expect from such a ridiculous scenario.

Because I sleep very little on a good day, and even less when I am down, I have plenty of hours to kill this time of year. I typically spend that time re-watching movies and documentaries while I try to write. One of my favorites is Cast Away with Tom Hanks. I love the part at the end when his character is talking with an old friend, and Hanks admits that he had reached a point, on the island, where he had resided himself to dying in that place, possibly by his own hand, because he was never going to be rescued. And then, just as he had given up all hope, the morning tide brings him a sail in the form of a wall from a portable crapper. In the end he is saved, but he has lost everything that was important to his former self. He is extremely sad, but he will go on living, “… because you never know what the tide will bring.”

I mention this because I see a cornucopia of posts during the holidays concerning depression and suicide awareness. These are all well-meaning thoughts, but they really don’t address the problem of absolute hopelessness that comes with depression. In my extensive, personal experiences with suicide, depression and mental illness, I have come to believe that only hope can treat these things. I say treat instead of heal because depression is like herpes; that shit’s coming back eventually, so you had better enjoy the peace while you have it.

So, in an effort to spread hope this year I offer my version of an uplifting Christmas story.

Last Saturday, I was in the middle of my annual holiday depression cycle – humbugging my way through the day, when I stopped at a gas station. This particular gas station services several small, rural towns, so the polite customers where lined up single-file, with the person at the front of the line going to the first of two cashiers with an open window. Rural people are very polite, so long as you don’t say the word “Obama”. That is like saying “bomb” in an airport.

As I stood in line, I noticed that the cashier on the left was far better looking than the one on the right. Being the dirty-little-boy-stuck-in-an-old-man’s-body that I am, I was trying to will the line to move so that I could be serviced by the hot cashier. I can’t really say that she was “hot”; hot for a rural service station cashier would be a better description.

The line moved along until I finally found myself at the front. I was elated when the old woman on the left finished her transaction before the person on the right. I inched slowly, as a polite person does in that situation, toward the old woman, expecting her to move. She did not. The woman just stayed right there at the window fumbling through her purse. In a nanosecond, my overall mood went from generally annoyed to fuming.

As I watched the person on the right complete their purchase and move out of the way, I altered my focus in an attempt to will the universe to manifest my vengeance on the old, bumbling woman on the left, for no other reason than her hogging of the relatively hot cashier.

Why am I such a jerk? I don’t know – tradition mostly.

Bitter and angry, I stepped up to the right so that I could pay the average looking cashier for my gas. I am a bit of a sucker for scratchers, so I picked out a $10 holiday ticket and added it to my transaction. Even as I got my change and turned to leave, the old woman was still standing at the window on the left. Had the woman not been so old and bumbling, my scratcher would have come from rolls of tickets on the left, as opposed to the ticket I now held, which came from the right.

You can probably imagine where this story is going. I jumped in my truck and scratched the ticket to reveal ten $100 winning numbers, for a total sum of $1000. This is not a great deal of money, but cash is really tight this time of year and this extra grand would insure a little less holiday stress, and slightly wider smiles on my children’s faces; the only thing I ever want for Christmas.

The moral of my story is this: Unless you are stranded on an island, the tide is never going to bring you a broken piece of a discarded shit-box with which to save yourself. But, if you are down this holiday season make sure you reserve at least some hope… You never know when an old, bumbling bitch might come along and make everything just a little bit better.

Merry Christmas Everybody!