I was thinking earlier about music, and just how very important it is to me, and wondering if others with depression and other disorders (I also suffer from OCD, and when both are "active" I am nearly non-functional)…..

From early childhood I always had a record player, and my patterns began back there somewhere, I believe. My dad died when I was a very small child, and mother "controlled" my life, and pretty much kept me isolated from other kids, so I had no friends, and my records and music became my friends…..later on, books were added to the mix, once I discovered they could "take me away" from my world….

Once I discovered "serious" music in college (classical and opera, etc) it became deeply satisfying and meaningful to me, filling vast "holes" or whatever that one would call it….lonliness or ?…that needing "filling"….this music did this for me, and literature, more knowledge, and film and it's history and more knowledge of it, too, helped to further "fill" the blank spots, etc….

So, I was wondering just how many others out here are like myself, and music, literature, and film (the arts, in general) are the main fabric that holds one together?

While collecting these things has "broke" me most of my life, financially, this process, has, conversely, I believe, kept me sane. I do truly believe that without my music, books, and movies, I would be irrecoverably ill. My very few friends (and I do mean very few…I just cannot seem to put myself out there, vulnerable, as it were, to others) and my pets over the years have of course helped also to keep me on an even keel. And, luckily, I also have always been smart enough or intelligent enough to recognize when I am in "trouble" and need therapy, and have always gone and sought it out….

So, all of you who read this entry, please do comment on this, and let me and others know if you, too, find this same pastiche part of what "holds you together" too…..

By the way, everyone,

I Wish You Pleasant and Happy Holidays

in case I don't post another entry before the Season is over!

Big Hugs,

Greg