Embracing The Dark Times

I have to preface this blog by explaining why I am writing it at all.

I think there are many, many people out there that write because they are burning with creativity and the only way to let out some of the steam is to put their pen to paper or their finger tips to a key board, or now a days, even their voice to a recording device that will literate their words for them.  It's the same thing for dancers, who are compulsively compelled to move and stretch and fly in order to express their emotion; same for singers who are required to, at times, belt it out at the top of their lungs; just to make the point, I will even go as far to say that athletes have this same creative drive as the run or row or throw or flip. People express their inner selves the best way they can through these creative forms... I just don't think that's the real reason I write.

There are others that write, not because of the liberation they feel to expose their creative energy, but simply because they are damn good at it.  It's a much rarer reason to write, I think, since there are thousands upon millions of people who would love to "make it" as a writer, but really they just don't have the extreme and effortless talent.  When I look up at my modest shelf of books written by authors like Eggers, Palahniunk, Foer, Kerouac, Murakami, Sedaris, Robbins, Lamott, Thoreau, London, Whitman, I do not think they got as far as they have with their publications because they have repeatedly bared their souls in the only way they knew how, but because they worked hard, threw away the crap, and made examples of their excellence. They are Writers, real ones, because they are good and because they are masters of perseverance. That's definitely not the reason I write.

It has taken me several years to convince myself it was OK to consider myself a "writer" at all. Sure I've had a few poems and stories published in school newspapers and private printings, hardly the platforms to boast or declare credible value to my efforts. And of course when I'm feeling especially vexed I may open my little red journal or whip out my computer to rant about some personal or ethical dilemma, but trust me, I face a lot more dilemmas in my day to day life than my rants give me credit for. If I only felt on fire once a month or 2 or 3 times a year like this blog would suggest, I'd be a much more comfortable person.

I should clarify that I do write in part because it is creative, it takes effort and wits, it expresses something inside of me, and perhaps I am OK at it, better at it than I am at any other mode of communication or art.

The fact of the matter is, I write because I have depression.

I think I need to pause here because it is not something that most people with depression would like to admit. It is also a disease (be that a treatable one) that is severely minimized and depreciated in our society, even though an estimated 21 million children and adults are affected by the disorder annually.

Now, you may be thinking, like the rest of your collectively unconscious American peers, "This 'disease' (cough, cough) is merely a weakened state of mind which is over diagnosed because antidepressants are trendy and doctors aren't paid to care about causes, but treatments, as they are sell outs to pharmaceutical companies."

Well, I guess I can't argue that point. It's entirely possible. However, my point is that as much as people know, or think they know about depression, it is remarkably stigmatized here in America and all over the world.

Why do I write, I ask myself? Not so much to create, but to cope; not so much because I deserve a platform, but to build a platform for others so that anyone who's ever felt as crappy and lifeless and desperate as I have will understand that depression is not one's fault. Not to mention, typing it out here reaffirms this truth for myself, and I can't hear it enough. Major depression is an illness just as real as cancer. It will not go away without the right support systems in place, whether that involves medicine or family or friends or religion or time.  While I am still seeking an effective support system for myself, and while I am digging myself out of the trenches of this illness now, as I have been for several months, and while I carry a history of depression at different depths that go back in time as long as I can remember (I idolized Eeyore and my imaginary friends committed suicide, if that gives you any insight into my troubling childhood), I feel just as deeply that this topic should be discussed openly and freely, without shame, in order to conjure the support it takes to heal from the beast.

I recently heard a lecture discussing pessimism - a surprising topic, as most of us are trying to be the opposite - and the speaker quoted Nietzsche several times explaining that the proper way to live is to embrace the dark times we all face - the pessimism - embrace the lessons that suffering provides, and cultivate the relationships that are naturally built when one confesses their private selves.  This clever idea really strokes my sulking conscience. Embracing the idea that I should embrace my suffering encourages me to write about my depression as publicly as this blog will allow, not just for myself as a way to vent and cope and seek solace in the few friends who may read this, but for everyone who has ever been touched by the problem of depression, and I think that has to be just about everyone, period. I know most of my own friends and family don't know how to "deal with it," and I know a lot of my friends don't even know I suffer from it, since I, like my 21 million fellow melancholics, am trained to mask my truest emotions as much as possible and minimize sadness by calling it things like "a case of the Mondays" or "I was really burnt out from work so I just slept all weekend" or by only posting *happy things* on Facebook, even if they are completely insincere, because nobody wants to be cyber-friends with a Debby-downer. My hope is that my rambling thoughts to make these ugly truths more visible (even though I run the enormous risk of vulnerability and appearing as though the only way I can be emotionally intimate with anyone is by disclosing e v e r y t h i n g  to  e v e r y o n e) will give people a better understanding of what depression is, why it is, and how to kick start the healing process with the people they love.

What it is:

 (A journal entry from an unknown time)

It took me an hour to get out of my apartment today just to get a cup of coffee and write a little bit. It didn't take me an hour because I had to shower and eat a nutritious breakfast and have a pre-cafe coffee before hand... I was already dressed, my chores were done, all I had to do was put a few things in my bag and walk out the door. What slowed me was the dark pull that urged me to just stay where I was, close to my bed, and think about writing as I actually watched a marathon of Scrubs on Netflix. "Why leave? I have coffee here. I have internet and a computer and Netflix instant streaming and pen and paper, all the options are readily available."  I looked at my bed and at my writing chair, both flaunting my own, sad, Homer Simpson ass-impressions, which perversely attracted me. "I must get out."

I started to pull myself together and I looked in the mirror. I looked away, went toward my bag and stuffed my computer into it, then I went back to the mirror.

"God I'm ugly. I look sad. My fucking left eyebrow is so unruly.  I'm hideous. I'm definitely gaining weight. Who am I? I hardly recognize me."

I was trying to look further into my eyes for some deeper sense of recognition, but I couldn't. "I look empty. I am nothing. I hate myself. I hate looking at this. How can this be me? Why would anyone want to look at me? This is disgusting."

I went back to my bag. And back to the mirror. This is a masochistic game I can't stop playing. The dark pull is always trying to get me back into bed. The microbial hopefulness left in me is always quieting nagging and trying to get me out of the cloudy dungeon I've created for myself, but to little avail. It smells stale, like something is slowly dying. Even with candles and air fresheners thoughtfully placed throughout my abode, all I sense is decomposition. Even when all the shades are drawn on my window dominated walls and it's sunny outside, it seems gray and foggy where I am.  I feel like you could punch or stab me, and I would have no sensation of it. I think, "Can I get someone to try that on me?" Wadded up tissues surround me. I can't remember eating in over a day but I'm not hungry, though I could use a beer.  My legs and arms feel like I'm heaving logs to and fro when I try to cross the room.  There is a pile of clothes on my bed and on the floor, I sleep on it often because I'm so apathetic I can't bother to push one pile onto the other, and I just keep pulling my sweatpants of out the mass for everyday wear.  There is a pile of dishes in the sink. There is a pile of DVDs scattered across the carpet.  There is a pile of me staring at myself in the mirror again, trying to ignore the other piles and collect myself decently enough to go into public, where I can get a few shots of Vitamin D and fresh air and pretend to be a normal person.  The effort it is taking is all just so I can say I left my apartment this weekend... just so when a coworker asks me what I did this weekend, I can say "I went out for coffee" because at least that's something.

"That fucking left eyebrow - why is it so asymmetric from the right one? Fuck!"

Why it is:

The reasons people have depression varies greatly from one person to the next. Of course I could generalize some of the causes, or you can go look them up on webMD. But since I've written this much already, I figure I might as well keep going and confess why depression is for me - not to throw a pity party for myself, but to validate that it's real, to embrace my suffering, and to illustrate that it is in fact a disease beyond the control of my frontal lobe. And the reasons are:

1. There is no reason at all. I know it sounds like I'm playing some semantics game with you, but the truth is that for many, if not most major depression sufferers, it seems like they just woke up one day and there were all the previously mentioned symptoms and hopelessness.  Nothing extraordinarily bad happened - a few stressors, but nothing they couldn't manage before. It's like a wire gets loose in the brain and suddenly nothing "clicks" anymore. When I had my first major depression episode my freshman year in college it was a few days after a douche bag who I'd been on a couple dates with dumped me for my best friend. I can still remember what my dorm room looked like when I got the instant message that exposed the truth, what it felt like to kneel down in the middle of the room and scream and bawl while my roommate tried to study, what the other girls in my hall looked like when they came in to muzzle my madness. As if I had never been dumped before! I honestly didn't even like this guy that much. He was a terrible kisser.  And once the rage resided that night, I proceeded with my regular routine for a day or two, until something inside me shut off. I skipped my first classes ever. I slept through track practice, faking the flu.  I couldn't stop crying, even when I mustered up the courage to call the clinic and tell them I wanted to kill myself, I was bawling on the line and continued to do so until I got to the health center and they put antidepressants and anti-anxiety pills in my mouth. This is a long first reason, but depression really threw me off guard. I had been a 4.0 student and a track-star, and for those things to not matter because a sloppy kisser preferred my friend seemed outrageous even to me. But it was what it was. And it is what it is now. People always try to tell me to have perspective... I DO. I know there are good things happening around me, and there are many worse things that I could be dealing with.  I know I am "fortunate" in many ways. But fortunes are impossible to embrace when you feel like the walking dead for no reason.

There are other reasons though.

2.    Genetics. My brother has suffered from depression and generalized anxiety much of his life. My dad, too. When I asked my dad about our family mental health history, he couldn't go too much further than himself, since pre-1940's, even with Freud around, the stigma of mental health was probably at it's strongest, not to mention my dad's parents lived through a national depression, aside from a personal one, so no one dared discuss such things, but he suspects my grandma and grandpa were melancholics, too.

3.    Low-income. This is a reason my depression lingers as well as a reason it exists. I can't afford to take a lot of preventative vacations, get a bi-annual full body massage, or buy organic produce from the farmers market. Money is a huge stressor for me - I haven't been able to pay my hospital bills from 4 months ago; even though I do have insurance, it didn't cover most of the cost of my colonoscopy. Each co-pay I spend is half a day's pay (before taxes).  Each rent check I sign is over half a month's salary, and I live in the cheapest studio I could find that didn't have a toilet in the living room. There is absolute truth to depression rates being higher among low-income groups. C'est moi.

4.    Poor physical health. With anyone who has a chronic or terminal illness, there is a deserving need for profound emotional support, and others are generally game to play the supporting roles. I have no intention to exaggerate the severity of my health problems... I don't have cancer, I'm not going to die from what plagues me today, but I am plagued.  I've had over a year and a half of intense focus on my digestive system. I've lost count of how many doctors' visits I've been to, how many antibiotic pills I've swallowed, how many supplements and aids I've purchased to ease the pain of 18 months of diarrhea, constipation, anal fissures and thrombosed hemorrhoids.  If you bled from your ass nearly everyday, if you had to walk with a limp because of razor sharp pain in your rectum, if you've had bouts so bad you couldn't move an inch from your bed or your bathroom, I think you'd be depressed too.

5.    Circumstance.  This is the main cause for most depressive disorders. It gets called "circumstantial depression" to depersonalize the problem and place blame on the crap luck of life, and that diagnosis seems to bring comfort to people, so I'm ok with it.  Circumstance is just one branch of major depression though.  Or maybe a better analogy is it say that circumstance is the thorny bark of major depression.  My circumstance is that I live far away from my family and friends. I moved to San Francisco without a job and only knew 1 person, who quickly fell out of friendship with me in the first 2 months.  The job I have now is completely isolating - I don't have any coworkers in CA, all my communication is done through email, Skype, and an occasional phone call.  Coworker-friends from previous jobs live spread out across the Bay Area which lends me to see them once every 3 or 4 months if I'm lucky.  I've had really shit luck with roommates, and because of this, I've lived in 6 different places in 5 years. Most recently, I moved to be by myself after breaking up with my live-in boyfriend who said I was a hypochondriac and exaggerating my pain, among other vengeful, gas-lighting accusations (more on that in the near-future post).  Finally, I'll add that the affect of the winter holidays only strengthens my pessimism.  Not only is there less sunlight now to draw good vibes from, but there's the societal pressure to be with loved ones, or particularly, one loved one, at this time of year. It does not surprise me that the elusive single straight male is craigs-listing for a holiday girlfriend. The pressure is on to be happier than ever at this time of year, which makes it especially difficult for anyone who's ever lost a loved one. There's the memories of Thanksgivings and Christmases past that cannot compare to the punctuated loneliness felt without those loved ones. I always get especially blue in late November because three of my four grandparents died on Thanksgiving. Crap luck. Tie these circumstances in with poor health, low income, and genetic predisposition, then it should be easy to see why I'm afflicted so. 

How to help:

I think of my battle with depression as a lot like Frodo Baggins carrying the ring to Mordor. I know it's cliché to reference this trilogy, but none the less, the story fits.  Carrying the powerful ring is a struggle... a long, dark, burdensome journey... and it takes a huge network of allies to help Frodo get through the world so he can be done with the ring for good.  The evilness of the ring is always whispering to him, begging him to give in to it, to let the darkness win. If it weren't for the Fellowship and about a billion other friends that back him up along the way, Frodo would have certainly been lost to Dark Lord Sauron's cause.

Now, it's hard to speak on what the right magical ingredients are that can help the hypothetical sufferer of depression feel relieved of his/her burdensome journey; there are too many variables that play into any one person's affliction. But the underlying aid that I feel must certainly be there for anyone carrying the "ring" is a band of altruistic friends that will help guide him, have his back when circumstances get especially tough, and who will remain steadfastly determined with him, even when his own determination wanes, for the time when he can embrace ultimate freedom from the despondency and actually feel, perhaps for the first time, the lightness of joy, love, and happiness.

The billion of metaphorical allies might come in different shapes and sizes... some in a pharmaceutical pill form, others in vitamins and supplements like Omega-3 and St. John's Wart. They might come in the shape of a doctor or therapist. They might come as giant Redwood Trees. They might come as adoptable cats.  They might come as reruns of Seinfeld episodes.  But the best allies to depression I've seen are a few plain and simple friends.

I understand how tiring the role of ally to a depressive can be, believe it or not I've been on that side of the coin, too. It can be frustrating because it feels like nothing you say is getting through. You can say, "But you DO have so much to live for, you're beautiful and smart and kind and a hard worker..." and the sad one will say, "No. I'm not. The end." which can feel like you’re hitting your head against a brick wall.  It can be annoying because, hell, we've all got problems and stressors in life, and sometimes you'd like to have someone relieve you of that drag, but the depressive is pretty self-absorbed and it's nearly impossible to shake him of his own self pity. I do not always envy the lives of my friends trying to deal and cope with me, as I have become their heavy burden to carry. Depression is damn sticky and ugly, and it can ruin a lot of relationships all on its own.

So while the ally has a big job to do, I can only say that with me, the simple efforts you make are by far the most effective. I can't swallow it when my friends try to fix my depression for me... force feeding me perspective does not ensure I can keep it down. Don't give me a laundry list of things I should be doing to take better care of myself. "Go make new friends. Go exercise. Do more writing. Get out of your apartment. Appreciate what you have" - I'm already ruminating about the things I should be doing to slay my depression, hearing it as a command only makes me feel even more like a failure. More obviously, you can't fight the battle for me or try to take away the stressors causing me pain (unless the stressor is you), just as Frodo's Fellowship couldn't carry the ring for him. But for all the ways you can't help, there are easy things you can do. I hope people can apply these things to anyone who's got the blues without much straining:

• Call, write, or stop by just to say hi and that you're thinking of them
• Instead of telling them to "think about other things," share what's going on in your life
• Go for a walk or run together - invite him to be your wingman for some physical activity [it is like swimming through molasses just trying to get out of bed for a solo activity, but I very rarely miss a date if a friend asks me to workout]
• Make dinner together
• Do not allow your own joy and enthusiasm to fade. Keep it high, and hope the one who's sad will eventually rise to your level of happiness
• Make her a mixed tape or CD filled with silly / happy / kick ass songs to help her keep her mood up when you're not around
• Smile
• Softly remind him of the things he used to find pleasure in - if he likes to play guitar, remind him how playing makes him feel, and encourage (without putting pressure on him) to play it maybe once a week
• Hug - virtual hugs are great too
• Just BE together, no motive or activity is necessary. Be ok with silence. Your quiet presence can tell someone a lot about how much you care

So now that I’ve written more than what is required for most college papers, I will conclude my lengthy confession.

As I try to summarize, I’m filled with quivering self-doubt and I’m wondering if all this rambling was at all useful or appropriate.  Have I over shared? Over exposed? Have I perversely sanctified depression (it’s starting to sound like a bad word again) as if it were something to actually talk about aloud? How sick is it – how disturbed will I be perceived – to have streamed my thoughts on this topic with oh so many words? I’m about to press “publish” on this epic tale and come face to face with the rest of the world that places no value, only stigma, on any health problem let alone a mental one, as if there was any difference from your bodily health and your brain health. I’m scared, to be honest.

I’m trying to remember why I have written all this at all… why did I preface this blog so many finger taps ago?

Because writing saves me.  And I hope so desperately that what I write can in some minuscule way save someone else – or at least teach someone a little more about the secrets I see about the world.  I do think health is important enough to talk about in public, and even online. I want to be a part of a braver society where we can genuinely be who we are and not hide ourselves for the sake of appearing “normal” or professional or unjudgeable. I have to accept that I’m being judged for all this, but the benefit outweighs the risk. I own my problem with depression, and that helps me deal with it; I hope my writing will help you help me deal with it, and I hope it can help you deal with it in whatever other way it may affect you in this lifetime.

I often wish I never had to deal with any sadness, ever. I frequently cringe when I’m forced to consider why anyone has to suffer at all. But it’s like The Lord of the Rings…

Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.

Maybe, just maybe, I am meant to carry depression so I can be more empathetic and better help and serve others who are plagued with health problems. Maybe it will somehow make me a better writer. Maybe this will make me a better friend.

When I have another down swing and get a little a lost in the darkness, maybe I’ll remember I wrote this; maybe my friends will have read this and be a little more available in the way I need them; maybe I’ll just lean on what Frodo’s best friend and companion said in response to Frodo’s gloomy doubt…

Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding onto something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in this world... and it's worth fighting for.