And then the pendulum swings the other way...

Having written about my mental health at some length on here, it's worth going back to it in the moments when it is good as well as when it is bad. I wouldn't say I'm suddenly at peace with the world and free of all the strange burden that is the enveloping darkness of depression, but what I would say is that after a few good days - a party, a good night's sleep, a bit of exercise - it doesn't feel quite such a slog. I might add that it hasn't rained for a couple of days, as well, and I absolutely think that the persistence of the rain has been contributing to the problem. People often ask if there is a particular cause, and that probably distinguishes most low moods from most periods of depression: if you can pinpoint the cause, it could well have been a low mood. That is not to say that anything of the type - with a rational, sensible cause, and characterised by sadness or anxiety or hopelessness - cannot be depression, or that it cannot be a mental illness; in much the same way physical trauma can cause things to be wrong with your body as well as pathogenic organisms... 
There are other things, as well, though. I stuck up a picture at my new workplace of some people from my old workplace, and even though there's an element of dwelling in the past in doing so, it has made me feel more at home. Perhaps it's just the notion that somehow I did exist before I started this job, because it can be easy to disappear, as though all the stuff before just didn't count. Perhaps it's giving me a sense of exactly how important that previous workplace and those previous people were, and that, as I wrote on here last time, it can be right to have left a place whilst also missing it terribly. Admitting, or perhaps accepting, that I do miss the things I have left behind, is part of the process of letting it go. And recognising that I have to let it go doesn't mean that all the good things that happened, all those happy moments, have suddenly lost their value. 
Those sorts of thoughts are the ones that have the power to be both immensely happy and terribly sad at the same time. The swing from high to deep (the extremes of sweet and sour) can go the other way, and the feelings that those memories bring can change in the same way. What we do in life echoes in eternity. Well, that eternity starts now.