Santa Ana Winds

  My grief counsellor was a serene, soft-spoken woman called Christine, from Blarney, County Cork. Yes, that’s what I thought too. I first met her, almost twenty years ago now. It was a huge step to take, and one that I took very reluctantly. I regarded her with deep suspicion as I began to open up, uneasily, about the daunting range of symptoms I was experiencing, from intellectual and physical lethargy, emotional meditation, loss of concentration, chronic negativity, pessimism, feelings of worthlessness, and unremitting sadness. She listened patiently to my hesitant, broken tones, as she’d learned to do; joining at length, my prologue with tender reassurance, “Low cognitive energy; persistently negative mood. Your loved ones tell you you’re irritable. You’ve lost interest in everyday life.” I nodded. “It’s what’s called ‘endogenous depression’,” she sympathised, in her seductive Irish brogue. I told her she was wrong about that; the depressed bit, I mean, and promptly ended our f...