ask me a question in the comments below or by emailing them to s.stpierre@thetigerwrites.com

First of, I want to make sure no one panics, in spite of the title, I am not in trouble. I am fine-ish, but not to the ‘my life is in danger’ point. This is just so you’ll understand why I haven’t posted anything in more than a month now.

To start, some background information.

I suffer from mild depression. I suffered from it for as long as I can remember. I won’t talk to when I was a kid, but definitely when I was in my late teens. I didn’t know it was what I had back then. It was never the ‘I can’t get out of bed’ kind of depression. It was just a lack of energy to do things that didn’t have to be done. And that was one reason why I was in my thirties before I realized what I had. I never had a problem doing what needed to be done. School, work, chores(well, to be fair, I never liked doing those, it had nothing to do with depression)

Others didn’t know, because I didn’t tell people. I can’t speak as to why, when I was a teen, but as an adult it was definitely because I didn’t feel others should ‘have to deal with my bullshit.’ It’s how I’ve always considered it, even before I understood what it was. My problem to deal with. People who know me know I don’t ask for help. I have this innate sense I can deal with everything, or if I can’t then I deserve what I’m stuck with.

Still in my thirties I realized what I had and decided to do something about it. I saw a doctor and I was on Wellbutrin for about 2 years. During that time, I restructured my life, my diet, and when I got off it, I was fine. I had the occasional dip here and there, but nothing worth making notes about.

So, considering my history, you’d think I would see depression try to sneak up on me. The problem is that I only have 2 main tells for when I’m depressed.

1) I isolate myself. It’s how I knew in my thirties something was wrong. The problem is that now I’m a truck driver. I am always alone. And when I say I isolate myself, I don’t mean I shun people. If someone shows up, I’ll enjoy their company, I really well, but I don’t have a drive to seek out company. It’s one of the reason Trucking agrees with me. So this is one sign that has been impossible to pay attention to since I’ve been trucking.

2) I have a difficult time sticking with stuff that I should do, but don’t really accomplish what I intended from them. This one brings me to Patreon.

I need to pause here to make something clear. I am not laying the blame for this at anyone’s feet. This is depression’s fault. I’m mentioning this to demonstrate how depression affects my behaviors.

So, one of the reasons I created a Patreon, other than the obvious, is to interact with people who read my stories. I thought that by giving people a place to support me they’d want to interact with me.

That never happened. I can count on one hand the number of people who actually talked to me because of Patreon. For a while it didn’t affect me, I would write my posts, have them mostly ignored, even directly asked questions a time or two. I chocked it up to only having a few supporters, in time there would be more interaction. I still believe that, But…

Depression makes it easy to look at that lack of involvement and start wondering why I’m doing this. It makes it difficult to ignore that little voice at the back of my head that whispers, ‘you’re wasting your time and you know it. It’s just pity money you realize that, right? If they really liked your stuff, they’d comment, they’d be involved. Wouldn’t it be better to just shut it all down? use that time do to something more valuable? Like playing Minecraft?’

I’m not kidding about the Minecraft thing. It’s a daily struggle to stay away from it.

So, a few months ago I missed a week. It was understandable, I mean I had a rough day, I should have written the post the next day, but it was long and busy. Tuesday just wasn’t any better, I had to catch up with all the stuff I’d missed on Furaffinity. Wednesday? Well what’s the point the weeks already half gone; I might as well just write it the next Sunday.

And because I felt guilty about missing a week, I did write it up.

Then a few weeks later I missed one again and went through the same thing. Finding reasons why I couldn’t write of the post. It went on and off for a while, six months, I think.

Then just over a months ago, it happened again. Only when I got to the next Sunday, I couldn’t be bothered to write. And I couldn’t the Sunday after that and the next. At that point I stopped thinking about posting them. Realizing on Monday I hadn’t done it, and that little voice asking me’ why bother?’ and yeah? Why bother?

Then I finished the second draft of Once Broken, book six of Tristan. Knew I had to tell you guys about it. Book three in the series was finished and ready for publishing, and I should have given you access to that at least a week ago.

And that voice is back. Why bother?

That’s what depression is for me. I can do everything that needs to be done, because that question doesn’t even occur to me, and fortunately that includes my writing. I have no problem keeping up with that.

But smaller thing, or things that feel smaller?

Yeah, that question keeps popping up, and right now, it’s difficult to ignore it.

I’ll get over it, I know that. This isn’t the first-time depression showed up. It won’t be the last, but I figured that after more than a months, you guys and gals deserved to know why I was silent.