David Senra

It's dark and getting darker.

My well of emotion is no longer being channeled and safely pipelined to the surface.

There's been an event, and my depression is spewing like an oil spill all over the beautiful turquoise-green gulf of my carefully planned and controlled existence.

Its black sludge is threatening to smother every last living part of me.

John advises, you need professional help.

At my request, he makes a call.

I get a number, and two days later, I drive 15 minutes west to a residential home in a suburb of Los Angeles.

I walk in, look into the eyes of a kindly white-haired, mustached, complete stranger, sit down, and burst into tears.

I started talking and it helped immediately.

Over the next few weeks, I regained some equilibrium.

I felt myself steady, righting myself.

I had danced and driven my way all on my own to the brink of my big black sea, but I didn't jump in.

By the grace of God and the light of friends, I wouldn't live and die there.

So began 30 years of one of the biggest adventures of my life.

Canvassing the squirrely terrain inside my own head for signs of life.

Life.

Not a song, not a performance, not a story, but a life.

I worked hard, dedicatedly, and I began to learn things.

I began to map a previously unknown internal world.

A world that when it showed its weight in mass, its ability to hide in plain sight and its sway over my behavior stunned me.