Captain’s Log – Page 18

New Reality

My name is Phil, and I live with depression.

When I began my recovery from the black world of depression I did not know that recovery was even possible. I doubted that my daily experience could ever change. In a way, I didn’t want it to. I did not want to get better. My life, and my everyday occurrences had been organized around my depression. I knew what to expect, how to react, and was comfortable in my environment. None of this means I was happy, but when you know misery, or emptiness, it is amazing how familiar and ordinary that can be.

I am currently re-watching one of my favorite television shows, House MD. Dr. Gregory House has a pain problem, and as an extension of that, a pain medication problem: he is addicted to Vicodin. Throughout all of the 8 seasons, but primarily in the first three, House’s narcotic addiction is a constant source of trouble, discussion, and explanation. Is he an addict? Should he stop taking Vicodin? How does it affect him? Does he need it? The show makes a pretty strong case for the physical pain House endures, but never really indicates exactly how much of House is drugs, or just personality. Either way, House refuses to change anything. He admits he takes too much Vicodin regularly, but the bottom is line is that ever since his infarction, he has defined his life by his pain and his relief of that pain. He recognizes that it isn’t a perfect situation, and abusing the narcotics or not, he isn’t happy. Rehab and physical therapy is a door to a healthier life, but House cannot (or will not) do the work to change. He is comfortable in his misery. I was Dr. House: comfortable in my misery.

But, as I have written about, I sought and found change. It took me over a year and a half of daily work and weekly meetings with my therapist, but by all accounts I have emerged from my depression. Medication and a fundamental shift in how I think about the world has brought me into the light. Then, about two months ago, my life altered significantly, nearly destroying all the progress I have made. I’ve been waiting for my newfound clarity to fog up, for my positive equilibrium to shift negatively. For all the lights to go out. But they haven’t. My recovery is solid. I have found a new reality, and fortunately reality rarely changes. Circumstances change, people come and go, growth and learning take place, but reality is constant. Mostly. I was born and lived under a certain reality. Somewhere around middle school my reality changed into depression. Last year, my reality changed again, out of depression, and into this newness of life I have been enjoying.

And all of that was threatened.

My wife left me. Legally, we are still married, but when she packs all her things, moves nearly 4500 miles east and eight hours into the future, the marriage is pretty much over. I could have gone with her, but following a spouse who is leaving the marriage seemed like the wrong thing to do. Our life, everything we had built over three and half years of marriage was here. Our life was not across an ocean and in a different world. The leaving happened abruptly. I was not ready: physically emotionally mentally psychologically. I had barely emerged from my darkness, and my wife grabbed her opportunity to seize her dreams and leave me behind. I scrambled madly, if only to ensure my own survival. Every plan, every expectation I had for my recovery had to be scrapped, or at best, reworked. Suddenly, I had to find a job. That I was not really ready for a job was beside the point: if I wanted housing and food, I needed employment. I needed companionship most of all, but fortunately I had already adopted a dog. In lieu of a wife, my puppy was all I could count on. At the last minute, I got a job. In between begging my wife to stay, trying to rationalize the sudden end of a marriage, and keeping up appearances for family and friends, I nearly imploded. Once or twice I got close.

Hannah flew away on May the 11th, 2013. We were married on January the 3rd, 2010. My marriage lasted 1,225 days. The fiction we tell friends and family is that this is merely a separation, a time to reevaluate who we are and what we want. The truth is we are never going to be anything other than friends.

Today I vacuumed the apartment, washed dishes, dusted, and tidied up the place. I cleaned the bathroom, changed towels on the racks and sheets on the bed. I swept floors. I had done none of these things since Hannah left. I know, gross to normal people, normal to depressed people. All this time, a little over a month, two things were constant in my head. One, I was not entirely certain I was not going to implode. I felt weak, devastated, lost, unsure of who I was, or what I should do with myself. I’ve been unusually depressed, angry, and numb. Two, I wasn’t convinced that it really was over. I thought Hannah would see the error of her ways and come back. I thought she needed this marriage, or me, or something bad enough to realize her mistake and return to start healing. She didn’t. If anything, she seems to be blossoming and growing in ways she and I never thought she could. She is better off where she is. Without me. And that was something I did not want to admit. Could not realize. Was too painful to face. I did not think I would survive, and everything around me was put on hold until I knew which way the world would fall. Why bother washing dishes if you are going to collapse into a dark depression? Losing a wife and facing a cold, scary world in the space of about a week and a half was about the hardest trial I could have endured (short of a close friend or family member dying at the same time). The surprise is that nothing fell. I covered my head and dove for cover, but the bomb was a dud.

I’ve been sick for several weeks now. General cold symptoms mixed with body aches and pains and psychological turmoil to create a vicious sinus infection and exhaustion. Middle of last week I stopped in my tracks, unable to go on. I could not work, I could not eat, I could barely sleep, and only then with a combination of drugs. But, this time I knew what to do: I got help. This time, mostly medical. A doctor checked me out, prescribed rest and antibiotics. I got both. This morning I woke feeling better than I have in a long time, physically and emotionally, and I knew what I had to do: embrace my new reality.

No wife was going to come back to nurse me to health or help with life. All I had was myself. And though I could scarcely believe it, I was strong enough to meet that challenge. I cleaned up my apartment. I washed my dirty dishes. I vacuumed my dirty floors. I dusted and swept. I made my environment livable again. Neither my depression nor my mangled personal life could hold me back.

My new reality, my restructured life is not fantasy, a cruel joke, or a drug induced dream. It is real. I can face what life can bring, and I can endure. I can rise above. Just me and my dog, my cute little Cordy.

I can live.

Stress: the Little Mind Killer

I haven’t written about my depression for a while, mostly because for a while I was feeling pretty good and felt like I was finally getting a hold on this slippery thing called life. I won’t say I was wrong about that. I now have a job, a dog, and I don’t spend my days staring at walls like I used to.

But life has a way of sending us down roads we never knew existed. Things transpire in life and relationships that we never could have predicted, setting us up for decisions we never thought we would have to make. I’m being vague here because there are some things that are very real and large in my life that I am not quite ready to address publicly. Hell, I don’t even want to address them in my own mind.

I recently made a trip to see my doctor. I’ve been forgetting things lately, but it is less like memory loss and more like aphasia, where you search for a word but can’t find it. I can’t remember the names of everyday objects, and am forced to describe what it is I am trying to say. “You know, that thing you use for eating…it is metal, and has pointy things on the end, you stab with it…” “A fork?” “Yes, that’s it! Can you grab me a fork please?” No, that isn’t an example. That happened. I also forget things that I know I know, facts and details I would never forget. I don’t have a brain tumor or dementia and I’m not on medication that could do this.

Stress is making me lose my mind.

Stress is a constant companion to depression. When I was in my darkest places, stress was pulling the trigger on the gun labeled depression. I didn’t stare at walls and fail to engage with the world through fear or doubt or lack of imagination. It was the stress that each situation presented that kept me powerless and weak. A trip to the grocery store to purchase food became all about how I would walk, how I would pass people in the aisles, what I would say to the cashier. The stress of how to handle each situation mounted until the easiest way to remain calm was to remain at home. I’ve made a career out of avoiding stress.

Now that I have a handle on my past, and have dealt with some of the overwhelming sources of stress in my life, I can now go to the grocery store with little problem (most days). But what they don’t tell you is that knocking down the giants that surround you only allows you to face the demons you couldn’t see.

So, back to the vague things and the stress that is making me lose my mind. After talking with me for a bit, and a consultation, my doctor told me that I am stressed. Stress (barring the appearance of physical symptoms) is what is making me unable to think, to remember, or to recall that a fork is a fork.

Yesterday, I had a meltdown. My stress caused me to regress backwards into black depression, with the accompanying rage and malice. The one clear, rational thought I had was to put my new puppy in her crate so that, if the worst should happen, she wouldn’t be in danger. I would never, in a million years, willingly or consciously hurt an innocent animal, but depression has a way of making a million years a nanosecond under the right conditions. (No, I didn’t hurt her, but she was very sad at being crated for most of the morning while I inexplicably, to her, was only a few feet away, seemingly asleep.) I called into my therapist and left a message for her to contact me. I was barely able to focus the words over the phone, but I knew I needed something extra to get me through the morning. By noon she called back and we talked through what was eating at my brain. “Phil,” she said, “this is normal. I would have worried if you didn’t have some sort of freakout episode.” She proceeded to calmly guide me into a few healthy behaviors and coping strategies. We will have a real meeting soon. After that, I felt a bit better, and I played with my dog for almost an hour (understandably, she had quite a bit of pent up energy).

I still have no idea what to do about what is facing me, what is clawing at my mind. I’ve moved beyond shopping for cookies and milk to larger life issues that were unavailable for processing when I was trapped in dark depression. Now, I have no choice. They stand before me and I have no recourse but to face them, somehow. I cannot go back. Retreat ends in darkness and death, non-metaphorically speaking. But the stress of how to handle what I must handle is luring me back into depression. Things I once enjoyed, I stare at listlessly. I barely eat. I take my dog for short walks. I can’t sleep (which is why, as I type this, it is nearly 0400).

For most people, stress is what makes a hard day hard, a challenging week challenging, or a situation unpleasant. For those of us among the depressed, stress is the little thing obliterating our mind.

Right now, I don’t know what to do except to return to bed and try to sleep. Short term, I need to work as hard as I can for solutions and a way to move beyond stress, because no one can live under this much stress and tell the tale for very long.

That I am able to articulate all this is a measure of how far I’ve come. I hope through this you understand a little bit what dealing with depression is all about. It isn’t the momentary blues most people talk about: it is a constant life battle.

Tears of a Lost Sheep

“What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?” Luke 15, the Bible

“I’m the sheep that got lost, Madre.” – Creasy, Man on Fire

“Then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire, shut up in my bones; I am weary of holding it in, and I cannot endure it.” Jeremiah 20:9, the Bible

Sometimes I hate being me. Specifically, I’m a writer. This is not something I chose, that I ever wanted to be, that I ever looked for in my life. I wanted to play baseball. But, I’d have been a writer anyway. I can’t help it. I went to school, I’ve developed and honed my skill at writing. But no matter what I cannot stop. Things burn in my brain, and wind their way round and round my cranium, shouting at me. I can’t quiet them, I can’t shut them up, and I can’t ignore them for long. They must be let out.

So I write.

I say this to apologize for what I am about to say. It isn’t completely fair or nice, but I can no longer hold it in. I do not claim to be right, or without blame, but this is what I cannot keep silent about.

Ever since a madman walked into a school and murdered children, I haven’t been quite right. I tried to make sense of a senseless act. What kind of person, disturbed or otherwise, misconstrues a threat out of something completely harmless? Even animals tend not to attack when they are not threatened, or in need. But madness happens.

And then, as always happens, the murdering psycho is endlessly discussed, and analyzed, and researched. And then, before that is finished, the debate turns, as it should, to us, the survivors, we who stood by, even if we were given no choice, and watched it happen. What could we have done? we ask ourselves. How could we have stopped this? we wonder. Why could we not save our children? These questions burn most intensely in the minds of those who lost their sons, their daughters, their sisters, their brothers, their friends. Even people like me, who live hundreds of miles away and will never meet anyone associated with this tragedy can’t help but ask the questions. After all, my niece attends school. My sister visits movie theaters. My mother walks down the street.

Finally, the discussion gets muted into something political. The rage and the sadness turns societal. We blame, we turn on each other, we shout, and everyone concocts their own foolproof plan and clamors for it to be heard. This is only natural. We want to do something. Every single moment of every single day, people die. Right now, as I type, people are dying. Why don’t I feel outrage, sadness, why don’t I call for something to be done?

First, I accept it as a natural part of life. The human condition: 100% fatal in every single verifiable case. Second, it isn’t being thrust into my face. Most days, I don’t see death. I don’t feel it. I live in the false comfort that it has slunk off into the night and won’t come back. Until it does.

Then I want to beat it back into the night.

All of this is completely natural.

In a way, we are all still dealing with our grief. Our personal grief, our social grief, our national grief, our human grief. Therefore, I don’t condemn. I don’t blame, and I don’t seek to pass judgment. A person in pain, a person in mourning is not accountable for the outpouring of grief. They can’t be. It isn’t like they can stop it. Emotion is real, emotion is overwhelming, and emotion is valid.

What comes after the emotion, the grief, and the time to mourn the dead is the part I want to address. No, the part that I can’t help but address. I wish I could stop typing, but it isn’t that easy. Be angry at me if you must.

I lost my faith. I once was a Christian, walking down the straight and narrow path towards heaven, following in the footsteps of Christ. That is no longer my reality. I don’t necessarily live or act any different than I did, but I am less certain about truths I once held dear. And that is my cross to bear, my own particular road to hell if I am wrong and my childhood was right and if it is about right and wrong and not about something else. So don’t make the mistake of believing that I don’t know what I am saying or that I didn’t once believe as you might right now.

One thing that I began to see, and read, and hear much of in the wake of our dear children’s death was shouting about gun control. I’ve heard it my whole life. Ever since Columbine. That doesn’t surprise or bother me. If someone gets bitten by a dog, it is the dog that suffers, regardless of any circumstance, though that is hardly a fair metaphor. But I don’t hold guns responsible for acts of violence done by them. A gun is just an object in space, without will or desire. A gun never can or will act on its own.

Humans act. All to often: using guns.

And in this debate, I hear people talking about banning guns. About keeping guns. About hammers, cars, baseball bats, and Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America.

I hear Christians shouting that we should be allowed to “keep and bear arms”. That I can no longer abide. It burns me up and sets my heart on fire. I weep, and I wail, and there is no one to listen.

WHY? Did not Jesus himself, in the face of angry mob which had gathered to murder him, say to the man defending him with a sword “whosoever lives by the sword shall die by the sword?” I have seen, my whole life, a country and a people that lives and dies by the sword. It is, without sarcasm or ridicule, the American Way. A cursory study of the history of America proves that we won our independence with guns, we shred our nation apart with guns, we lost millions in European wars by guns, we stopped Hitler with guns, we fought a pointless and for too long conflict in Vietnam because we could not put our guns aside, and not so very long ago a man with a gun ended the lives of innocent children. We are living and dying by the sword.

To anyone who names themself Christian, and yet calls for continued existence and ownership of guns: how can you? Are we not to live by faith, by love, peaceably with all men? Do you imagine that the only reason Christ refused to fight back in the garden was because he was destined to die? Do you think that if God Himself came to live among us for no particular reason at all, he would have fought for his life?

The cowardly and despicable National Rifle Association has said that “the only thing that stops a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun”. What utter folly. What sheer, willful stupidity. Have we forgotten Tiananmen Square? Have we forgotten that a man, a man whose name we do not even know, stopped a battalion of tanks with nothing but his body. Actually, his hands were full. But not of guns. Of shopping bags. A gun is far from the only thing that will stop a bad man. In fact, in most cases I know of, guns actually prove fairly ineffective at stopping bad things. Guns are nowhere near the best way to stop a bad man.

Love. Understanding. Respect. A determination to stop at nothing to avoid violence. These are the things that will stop bad men. I am not some hippy, nor a person who is naive. I know that not every madman can be reasoned with, can be hugged into inaction, or can be understood. But I do know that trying is the first, best thing.

By clamoring for your right to own a gun, to bear a gun, you are demonstrating a general refusal to believe an alternative exists. “My gun will protect me” is the most foolish lie I’ve ever heard someone believe. “My gun will make us safe” is an insidious lie I am sick of hearing. Our insistence on arming ourselves is what is killing us. Our guns are what are killing us. Guns were designed and ever intended to do one thing and one thing only: kill. Guns were not designed to kill animals. We were killing animals just fine. What we couldn’t do was penetrate armor. Animals don’t wear armor. People do. Wearing armor, generally, gives a person a better chance at surviving combat. A gun makes most armor ineffective. Guns were devised to kill people. That is their only reason for being created and existing.

Christian, how can you say that a gun is something you must be allowed to own, and bear? It may be American, but it is not Christian.

Jesus died to prove that death is the best final resort in the face of unreasonable violence. Love your enemy so completely that you let them kill you if they must.

I’m sorry. I no longer have the proper credentials to say this to many who call themselves Christians and expect to be heard. For the rest us who don’t identify with an ancient Jew, let me say that love is still the best option. You don’t have to believe the Bible to know that, because I know that, and there is much about the Bible I find hard to believe. I am not perfect, I do not have many facts, nor do I have a loud, persuasive voice.

But I do have a voice. And as an American, there is a First Amendment which gives me the right to use my voice. I chose to use my voice in place of a gun. I will always believe that a voice, a word, is the most powerful force in the universe. Does not even the Bible teach us the power of the Word of God? Words can be used to stop a madman from ever getting to the point of violence. Words can be used to stop armies from deploying for battle. Words can stop bad things from happening. And even if that is for one more moment, one more hour, one more day, is that not worth the salvation of blood? How cowardly must you be to weary of talking, of hearing another talk, so that you seek the most effective means of silencing their voice forever? Is not murder the ultimate violation of America’s First Amendment.

Also, seeing as how I am allowed to speak up, and I can’t keep quiet, though I wish desperately I could and avoid the inevitable arguments or counterpoints that may follow, I simply refuse to remain silent. To that end, you are certainly welcome to disagree. I am not hypocritical. You are allowed to speak. I am allowed to think you are wrong. Use your words. As God once said, “come now, let us reason together”.

Let us reason that an object which exists only to kill, unlike a baseball bat, is a bad thing, and the worst option for conflict resolution.

Right now, I feel pain every single time a person who claims to follow the Prince of Peace calls oh so loudly for a weapon of destruction to be theirs. This is part of why I lost my way. I couldn’t reconcile a lifestyle with what I knew to be true, or what an ancient book seemed to say in other parts of it that aren’t so nice. For all I know, Jesus was a rebel against God Himself, a God who calls ancient Israel’s King David, a mass butcherer, a man after his own heart. I didn’t know, I still don’t know, and so I stepped away to be true to what I did know. I lost my own way to better follow my conscience.

I’ve said what I had to say. I apologize it took so long. If you made it this far, thanks for listening.

Perhaps now I can rest. I so long for rest. And Peace.

One

What can one man do? Can one person change the world?

As I woke this morning in the wake of the 57th presidential election in the United States of America, I saw two broad reactions: fear and joy. Many among my family and friends are genuinely afraid of what our president will do to our country. At the same time, many of my friends (fewer of my family) are genuinely excited for what our president will do for our country.

I’ve not been alive that long, and in my life I’ve only paid close attention to the most recent election cycles. In all, I don’t think I’ve seen such extremes of emotions as I have following this election. Maybe it is because, really for the first time, this election has been most broadly covered not just by the news media, but my the vastly larger social media. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and every other social media web site that I can think of has exploded with photos, quips, blurbs, posts, and opinions of every kind. (Indeed, I am now blogging about the experience). I’ve read the thoughts of those around the country, and around the world, as people have discussed the next president of the United States.

Certainly never before have I been personally aware of the global implications of one election.

In my lifetime the world has become an increasingly tiny place. Globalization and world wide connections went from largely non-existent to commonplace. When I was a kid, I could talk on the telephone mounted on the wall to my grandmother in Ohio. Today, I can type on the telephone that fits into my pocket with room to spare to anyone in the world, or even the few people who orbit the world from the International Space Station. I receive live updates from a robot that is rolling along the surface of Mars. For a kid who loaded up the very first LEGO and Star Wars websites on a very slow modem, that is nothing short of incredible.

It is no wonder, then, that so many are invested in the politics of one nation.

Beyond the interest, beyond the investment, beyond the curiosity, I see real, raw emotions. People are crying, hurting, grieving, cheering, shouting, laughing. Some believe that real progress has come, others feel that the apocalypse is nigh. How can that be? How can the election of one man, and the non-election of another (whom many people had never heard of a year ago) cause such emotion?

I think because now, more than ever, one small voice can change the world. One person can impact everyone. Recently several dictatorships have crumbled, several countries saw revolutions of freedom, and in at least one of those revolutions, social media facilitated that revolution. Instead of one Paul Revere there were hundreds, and instead of one route and one man shouting, there were hundreds of avenues of communication and hundreds of voices shouting.

But each of those voices is one of many, and unless you are looking for them, tuned in to them, you might not ever hear them. Now, more than ever, the person who controls the loudest, widest megaphone is still heard over all the rest. More people hear the President of the United States than any single voice on Twitter.

Can Barack Obama’s voice carry that much power? Can he, speaking from the Oval Office, change the world? Can one man destroy or exalt a nation?

Only if many other voices join his. One man, one woman, one person, is powerless by themselves. This has been, and always will be, the case.

George Washington could not and did not forge a new nation single handedly. Abraham Lincoln could not and did not keep American one nation by himself. Even Jesus Christ, whom many consider to be the greatest man who ever lived (or lives still), would have been just one of many messiahs who walked Palestine had it not been for the voices of his followers who spread the good news of the man from Galilee to every corner of the globe, who wrote about him while in prison, exile, or under the threat of death. Maybe Jesus was God, that is for each person to decide, but my point is that by choosing to avail himself of the help of humanity, Jesus was every bit as dependent on the joining together of many voices for his message to be heard. How else could billions be swayed by his message of love and faith when, at most, mere hundreds personally witnessed his life and death, and alleged resurrection.

How do we expect that one man, Barack Obama, can destroy or exalt America by himself? Would Mitt Romney have rescued American and put it back on the right path?

The president is one person in one White House. The supreme court justices are nine people. There are 100 men and women in the Senate. The House of Representatives contains 435 voting members. This country has well over 300 million citizens. Obama presides by the consent of the governed. The supreme court judges by the consent of the governed. The senate legislates by the consent of the governed. Representatives represent by the consent of the governed. Five hundred and forty-five people govern a United States of three hundred million people. Every single one of the four hundred and thirty-five are replaceable by any one of the 300 million (eventually).

We are a nation of the people, by the people, for the people.

One man is powerless against the good or evil 300 million people can do. The reality is that no policy of the White House, no law of Capitol Hill, not decision of the Supreme Court can truly govern the heart of one person. George Washington was bound by, and subject to, the laws of the King of England. Laws he ignored to lead a revolution. Jesus was bound by, and subject to, the laws of Moses and the laws of Caesar, many of which he ignored to lead a different sort of revolution.

Fear not, rejoice not, the responsibility to do good and to shape your country is now, and will always be, yours alone every single day. The good book says “To him who knows to do good, and does it not, to him it is wrong” and I do not disagree. Each and every day the will, the desire, and the power to change your life, your family, your nation, and your world is in your hands. Four hundred and thirty-five people in Washington, D.C. cannot ever take that from you, not even the 435th man who lives on Pennsylvania Avenue for another four years.

A great man once said “be the change you want to see” and another great man once said “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Those two non-elected men changed the world despite their governments. Obama can do nothing unless a great many people share his voice. He would be one man shouting into a world of billions. Raise your voice, and do all that you can do for those who live and breathe right next to you. That is how America is made great, that is how the world is changed, and it has nothing to do with who is president of the United States of America.

You can live in fear of what Obama may do. You can live in joy of what Obama can do. But neither is as powerful as living in the knowledge of what you can do.

So only one question remains: what will you do?

What will I do?

Sunshine

My name is Phil, and I am depressed. Well, sort of.

I’ve been writing about my depression off and on for a few months, and I stopped because it seemed like I didn’t have anything more to say. I had hit a bit of a plateau and nothing seemed different or noteworthy. I did my thing every day, some days better than others, not too bad, nor too good. While in therapy, I resolved issues and finally brought to an end sources of mental and emotional pain. But I did not feel better.

I was intellectually happy to be clear of what had tormented me for so long, but resolving conflicts did not bring me emotional happiness. Closure, to be sure, maturity, definitely, and depth. Depth of understanding, and of insight. I felt like I had grown as a person, had emerged from a period of mental confusion, but I wasn’t better.

I longed to feel normal, to be happy, and to grasp the ability to exert power over my will. So I took the only avenue left to me: I did drugs.

It is amusing to me to phrase my recovery in those terms because the American “War on Drugs” has given drugs, and some medicines, a bit of a bad name. I’m not sure where we got the idea, as a society, that trying to outlaw and violently eradicate various drugs was a good or effective idea, since the exact same policy didn’t work for alcohol in the 20s. Anyway, my only previous interaction with mind altering drugs was in college when I experimented with kidney stones and their wonderful side effect: oxycodone. Boy, that stuff made me feel great. I’ll admit I went to a few classes high, and for a week or so I had no pain. Then my wonderful girlfriend, who is now my wonderful wife, eradicated my remaining stash. She did that because she realized what I didn’t: oxy may make me feel good, but it wasn’t exactly the best way to achieve that feeling. It may seem as if I am arguing for removing oxy from those who would seek to use it for other purposes than physical pain alleviation, but I’m not really. I could care less if people are getting high, much as I care less that people get drunk, or smoke themselves into cancer. Personal choice shouldn’t be curtailed. What I am saying is that while oxy fixed my symptoms, it didn’t fix my problems and Hannah wanted me to face my problems and get better for real. The end result would be about the same, but one method would be much more effective, permanent, and less annoying for those around me.

In the course of my therapeutic recovery, I was put on some medication. Not being a doctor, I can’t really explain what it does, but having paid attention in health class, I vaguely understand how it works, at least well enough for my own peace of mind. My initial dosage helped, it really did. I didn’t notice much change, but my wife did. I’ve described depression as being in a black room, and trying desperately to reach a door, through which there is light. I also talked about my everyday life as being one in which I am completely aware of my surroundings, of things I want to do, of actions I want to take but being completely unable to make the decision to act upon my wishes. It is a feeling of inertia, of moving through a chest deep pool of syrup. My initial dosage made the syrup knee deep, and made the room a murky light grey. I was better, but barely.

Recently, both my therapist and my doctor recommended increasing the dosage. So I did. And the difference has been remarkable. The very day in which I took the increase, I noticed a huge difference. I was content, even borderline happy. I had the power to exert my will. I saw things to do and I did them. I had complete freedom of movement. I looked around and was no longer in a black room but a light meadow. No longer was I held back by invisible forces; I could move freely. The only drawback with which I had to contend was ordinary, everyday, human laziness.

In other words, I am myself again. The best part is this: all of that was two weeks ago. I’ve waited to write about this new step, this new development because at first it was so strange, so overwhelming, so weird to me that I didn’t trust it. I wasn’t sure what to make of this new reality. It was wonderful and frightening all at the same time. And while, unlike oxy, I was not high, I was happy and energetic. I felt no pain for the first time in a very long time. So I waited to see if it would wear off, if my brain would adjust to the medication and things would simmer back down. So far, they haven’t. These days I get more done in an hour than I used to do in a week. I have made and enacted plans. I am getting my life moving again, simply because now I can.

Sure, I have bad days. But they are normal person bad days. They are bad because bad things happen in them. They are not bad simply because. I have good days that are normal people good days. They are good because nothing bad happens. I delight in little things again. Bleakness isn’t part of my reality.

So I wonder: am I still depressed? Yes. Clinical depression is a medical condition. If I were to stop taking my medication, I would be back in the black room before I knew it. There is a deficiency in my brain, just as there is a deficiency in my cardiovascular system that results in high blood pressure, just like there is a deficiency in my eyes that makes me nearsighted. I offset the other problems through the miracles of modern technology, namely other drugs and contact lenses, so too I offset my depression with medication. Also, I have learned to cope with the emotional trauma that is a part of life. Alcoholics can get treatment for being drunk, but the other part of their continued life as a sober person is the constant coping with the emotional part of alcoholism: the lack of control and the necessitation of constant vigilance. I learned, through my therapist, how to approach and understand emotional stresses so that I no longer allow them to overwhelm me, to take over my feelings, or to bar me from living a full life. I don’t do it perfectly yet, I am still very much at the start of this new journey, but the point is that now I can walk. I can start my journey anew.

I am, as the song goes, “walking on sunshine” and boy, does it feel great!

(read about my depression by searching my blog for the tag “depression“)

Building Blocks

My name is Phil Martin, and I am depressed.

Last week, I had a breakthrough in the treatment of my depression, and I’d like to share that with you.

I did not have an entirely happy childhood, and someday when either my family is dead or is ok with it, I will share more details about that. In the unhappiness, fear, and pain, I did have some pleasant experiences. I loved to play with LEGOs, those brightly colored plastic bricks that allow anyone to build to the limits of their imagination. My brother and I would spend endless hours in the afternoons, mornings, evenings, and any other time we could, building with our LEGO bricks. We would coordinate on buildings, starships, and sculptures, or we would have contests to see who could build the best model. We tested the structural integrity by dropping them from the top bunk of our bunkbeds onto the hard wood floor below. Whichever brother’s masterpiece exploded into fewer pieces won. And then we would rebuild the broken bits.

This all lasted until my brother moved out to go to college. The LEGOs were then left to me, and I played on by myself. Then my parents decided to become missionaries and move to Papua New Guinea. Not wanting to lose any bricks along the way, I packed most of them up and they were kept by a friend of the family’s, along with many other belongings.

It wasn’t until I graduated from college, got married, and lived for a few years that I ever got the LEGOs back. In the meantime, of course, I had started to collect my own sets and continued to build, but I still remembered and longed to regain what I had from my childhood. At the same time, my depression intensified and I finally sought treatment. I never thought these two parts of my life would intersect in a way that would radically shift my thinking about everything.

My mother visited the family friend, and collected everything that was stored in their attic. She mailed me my boxes, and with abundant joy, I unpacked the LEGOs. I immediately gathered my old instruction booklets, sorted all the bricks, and started to build. I started with my very favorite set, a small red biplane.

Alas, I only made it a few pages through the build before I realized that I was missing quite a few pieces. I was heartbroken. My favorite set, all my pieces, and I couldn’t complete the construction. It remained a broken pile of pieces that couldn’t be put back together.

This is where my brother comes back into the story. A year or so prior to my mother retrieving my things, he went on his own to where our belongings were kept and removed one container that held what he believed were his LEGOs from back in the day. I thought that he should have contacted me to ask and make sure before he did, but ultimately he did nothing wrong. But I thought he did and I blamed him for my missing pieces. Not realizing what was really going on inside my heart and my head, I villainized my brother. I started a crusade against him, with the LEGOs between us, until he got so fed up with my anger and persistence that he sent me what he had taken.

Again, I was overjoyed. I finally was going to be able to complete construction on what I once had, and find the joy and happiness that was once mine. This time, I left my little red biplane until last. I built everything else I could find first, but it didn’t make any difference. I did have a few more pieces, but once again lacked everything I needed to make it whole again. I was livid. In a rage I called my brother and let him have the full brunt of my disappointment and bitterness. I accused him of holding back, of stealing, of being an instrument of my pain. Only, he wasn’t, and he really had nothing to do with what was really going on. Hurt by what I said, and upset at seeing our friendship destroyed over a pile of plastic blocks, my brother started to try to remind me of all the good times we shared. Suddenly, in the middle of it all, listening to him, and staring at my incomplete model, surrounded by piles of bricks, I realized what was really going on. In an instant, I knew.

This wasn’t about LEGOs, my brother, or a little red biplane. This was about my pain and my broken childhood. This was me trying to put my life back together. I’d fixated on a physical symbol of my joy, my happiness, and the best parts of being a kid. I thought that if I could just manage to put that little red biplane back together, and set it on my dresser, then not only would a little LEGO model that I loved be reclaimed, but my childhood would somehow be fixed. In my mind, my healing was dependent upon a few LEGOs. My past could be fixed with a few pieces of plastic and a simple instruction book.

But what my brother was telling me was that could not be true, that it is not true, and that life works differently. My brother lived through much of the same pain, the same family trouble, the same unhappiness I did, but what he knew was that by choosing to remember to better parts of a shadowy past, and by actively choosing to make better decisions every day, he could make a better future. For him, it wasn’t about the past, and its pain, it is about the future, and its hope.

In that moment, hearing his voice, and staring at the avatar of my brokenness, I knew that while I cannot rebuild the broken past, I can construct a brand new future.

Crying, I told him what I had just realized. I told my brother that I loved him, and that I was sorry for blaming him for my brokenness. We reconciled and we said our goodbyes. In a week, I’ll see him for the first time in two years. That will be a great time.

And the little red LEGO biplane? The irony is that I could have rebuilt it anytime I wanted. That was a fairly popular set back in the day, and at any given moment there are five for sale on eBay. Any time I wanted to, I could have bought one and had all the parts I lacked. So after I finished the call with my brother, that is exactly what I did. Yesterday, someone else’s little red biplane arrived in my mailbox. Using the old pieces of my past and the new parts of my present, I built a brand new model for the future.

I am a little more complete because I chose to incorporate the good from yesterday and integrate in the good from today to make a new tomorrow.

I am still depressed, that is a medical condition and a psychological reality, but I am now seeing things in a whole new way, and my road to healing is a little more certain. Things are not so black as they used to be. I have found peace that I have lacked, and a weight is gone from my shoulders.

I can fly a little higher.

Bitter Slumber

My name is Phil, and I am depressed.

Do you want to hear a joke? “Depressed individuals would attend regular group therapy if they could ever just get out of bed.” *pause for laughter* I don’t know, it might need some work. It seems I am cultivating quite the dark sense of humor lately, which when most of your days are black and not very funny, one must do to cope. As they say, it’s only funny because it’s true.

My therapist is always telling me that it is ok to stay in bed if I don’t feel like getting out, but in my own superior arrogance I always smirk (on the inside, at least) because I am not that depressed. But lately I have slowly become aware of the fact that I do, indeed, struggle with something as simple as getting out of bed. I wake up, and the first thing I do is check my email and twitter, which isn’t unusual, most people these days do that, but then I spend the next few hours checking my email and twitter. I excused myself because, blessed by my iPad, I could bum around online and not have to get out of bed and stumble over to my computer to do so. But the reality is that without my iPad, I probably would still stay in bed.

Even when I do drag myself out and get dressed and eat breakfast, I still end up back in bed my mid afternoon for a nap. I wake up sometime later and then spend a few hours doing whatever before I am back at it for “bedtime”. So, what is with all the sloth? Am I lazy? Am I exhausted from all the nothing I do? No, not really. I am depressed, and a physical symptom of depression is decreased energy and perpetual tiredness.

The irony, of course, is that I have trouble sleeping. At night, in the morning, in the afternoon, it takes me hours to drift off, and I don’t sleep very heavily when I am asleep. I wake easily. Many, many times, my body is very relaxed, but my brain is still very active. I might look as if I am asleep, but I am aware of everything and am not unconscious. It is rather torturous, actually. During the winter, I lay aware at night listening to the pipes groaning and knocking as they freeze, or thaw, or distribute heat. In the summer, I hear birds all night long, twittering and singing. I listen to trucks idling in the parking lot behind the apartment. I can’t not. I am not quite awake, but not asleep either. The mechanism in the brain that shuts off sensory perception during normal somnolence in normal people doesn’t seem to work for me. So I am always tired, perpetually sleeping, and never refreshed.

In high school and college I didn’t notice so much, but before I got married I had adapted my lifestyle to my depression. For one thing, I would routinely stay up until 3 or 4 am. I found that being truly exhausted made it easier to actually sleep. Sometimes I would stay up for several days in a row in order to be able to fall into a deep sleep. I wouldn’t wake early, something that is impossible now with a wife who rises early every single morning. I would be able to stay asleep until 10 am. I never was a morning person, but I have no choice now and the result is I feel more like a zombie than ever.

But all of these reasons, and schedules, and troubles, the fact of the matter is this: it is easier to skip painful hours of a depressed life by existing in a drowsy, dream like state. I don’t have to face the constant, conscious pain that is my life. I never can totally quiet the clamorous thoughts and endless analyzations of my life and everything that is broken in it, but sometimes, while nearly asleep, the mental anguish simmers to a whisper. Sleeping a lot is a mental and physical coping mechanism.

And this doesn’t even get into the dreams. I never know if I am going to have a psychotic, horrific nightmare or a fully lucid euphoric dream. I have way more of the former than the latter. My unconscious mind is a horror film. It literally scares the hell out of me. All my dark energy, repressed rage – sorrow – pain, and the trauma rises from the deep midnight to assault me. Sometimes I am afraid to fall asleep. But I still do, because, very rarely, I get a good dream. I am fully me, and fully powerful, and I can do things, and feel things, and I am happy and full of light. I feel like a person, right up until that moment I wake. These good dreams are a cruel fantasy, but at least I am able to live, however briefly. This is why abusing medication is such an easy thing for depressed people: we know the high is not real, but it ceases to matter. Any chance or excuse to feel good, we’ll take. A drowning person will do anything for one gasp of air, no matter how toxic.

Which leads to the conclusion of this sad examination: I am so very weary. I just want it all to end. I am so tired of being tired. The minutes are growing ponderous and I don’t want any more. I just want it to stop, finally, and not continue. *pause for laughter* but it doesn’t. It can’t. I won’t. My body isn’t worn out yet. Rib cage. What an apt name: cage. I no longer believe in a heaven or an afterlife, but I don’t care. I don’t need paradise when I die. I’ll take silent, eternal oblivion. But not yet.

So if you’ve ever wondered how depressed people can sleep so much, there’s a little glimpse. I’m sorry, I wish I could give you a happier look into my life today, but that wouldn’t be accurate or honest. This is the reality of depression, and if you live with or know depressed people, it’s better to have an honest look into their world rather than a manufactured image. You want happy, look elsewhere, I don’t have it.

I’ve been writing about my depression lately, and if you missed the previous ramblings you can search my blog for “depression” as I’ve tagged all the entries thusly.

Whosoever Puncheth the Wall

I’m Phil, and I am depressed.

Last night I was depressed, and I was a little angry about it. I hope I didn’t alarm anybody, but I know I did cause at least one person to worry. I was asked if everything was ok, and if the people around me are safe from physical violence as a result of my dark depression. Yes, I am ok. No, the people around me are not in danger.

I wrote last night specifically because, unlike right now, and the other four times I had written about my depression, I was not functioning on a higher, happier level. I wrote last night specifically because I was darker and deeper. This is an honest, straightforward and authentic account of one man and his depression. I don’t want to edit or censor or sugarcoat because I want the realness and the rawness to be evident, however that appears through the words on the screen.

Not only do I want those who know me to understand me, and perhaps know me better, I want other people – out there in the world – who are depressed to know that they are not alone. I can’t do that if I do not tell the truth and don’t shy away from unpleasantness. I also want those other people – out there in the world – who know someone who is depressed to be able to have an insider’s glimpse into the mind of a depressed person. Depression is extremely hard to understand, cope with, and live around. It doesn’t make sense, it isn’t constant, it is messy, unpleasant, and downright annoying.

But how do you have compassion, how do you support the depression of others unless you are able to sympathize? Sympathy, according to Wikipedia, is “the perception, understanding, and reaction to the distress or need of another human being”. It is fundamentally impossible to sympathize without “understanding”. Empathy, by contrast, is “the capacity to recognize [the] feelings [of another human being]” (Wikipedia). Other depressed people don’t need to understand. They know. They empathize, and I have heard from them as a result of my writing. But those that don’t know, who haven’t experienced, need a little help. I am here to educate, partly. I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t therapy for me.

Furthermore, the point I made badly last night was that there is no need for something to be wrong for a depressed person to be in a dark, bad place. Everything can be just fine and dandy. All can be right with the world and a depressed person can still be in a dark place. Earlier, I talked about how weather affects mood, but that is only a generalization. Plenty of bright, sunny days dawn upon a darkly depressed me. During the winter, there were a few slate grey dead days that brightened (winter days in Wisconsin don’t always dawn) that I was very light and relatively carefree. Everything can go right on a day free of responsibility or worry and I can be depressed. Everything can go wrong on a stressful, worrisome day, and I can be happier depressed. There doesn’t need to be any instigating factor.

An alcoholic always wants to be drunk. Stress doesn’t make them drink. Success doesn’t make them drink. Alcoholism makes them drink. So too: whosoever puncheth a wall puncheth the wall simply because they are depressed.

But don’t worry. I don’t usually punch walls, and the only person I remember punching was my brother. I was 13, he was 14, and believe me he deserved it.

I’m depressed, not violent.

Blame the Weather

I am depressed.

I’ve been having more good days than bad ones lately. This is indicative of almost nothing. If I were writing this past February, I would have been doom and gloom and full of rageful brooding. (Oh, nothing personal, that is my modus operandi when very depressed.) So, what was different about February? It was winter. Where I live that means slate grey skies for weeks on end; low, concrete clouds. A late sunrise followed by an early sunset. Everything is grey and faded and dead. Now it is summer. It is hot, unbearably sunny, full of blue skies and puffy white clouds. The grass is green and long. The leaves are green and rustling. The birds sing and the bunnies hop. So I am happier and more buoyant than I was in February.

I am a victim of the weather. I hate that atmospheric conditions can fuck with my mood. I wish I knew why that was, not that it would make anything better, just I like knowing the reasons why. My guess is that there is some sort of evolutionary reason why human brains are geared to respond to weather conditions. Probably something to do with productivity or hunting or something that doesn’t mean much in a modern world in which we insist on trying to ignore any connection we as humans might have to the environment. But it isn’t just me. It is well documented that people in general feel blue during the winter, and it isn’t just because school lets out in summer that we enjoy it so much.

I should probably clue you into something: I am writing from dark depression today. You see, the past four times I wrote, I was feeling fairly good. I was writing from light depression. But right now, I am tired, angry, sad, and in a very dark place. Oh, don’t be alarmed, it happens. Today’s dark place is brought to you by the cast and crew of the West Wing and my own jumbled thoughts. I’ve been watching the West Wing lately, a brilliant American TV show about the staff of the White House. The episode I watched tonight the was finale of season three. The President had to decide to assassinate a terrorist, and a Secret Service agent was tragically killed while buying flowers for the woman he was starting to love. The episode was beautifully written, masterfully performed, and was the best so far. It was an orchestrated ballet of life, story, and emotion. It nearly brought me to tears, which for me, means I was feeling quite a bit of emotion. That, coupled with a bunch of stuff rattling around in my brain has spiraled me downwards. The intellectual, English major part of me loved the mastery with which the episode was written and acted, but the depressive, tortured part of me got a kick in the gut. Since the latter has way more of a grip on my psyche than the former, well, you know now why I am writing from a dark place.

I am feeling poetical. This is not unusual. I am a poet, a writer, and a teller of stories, and the more I get depressed, the more I can write poetry. Try this on for size:

Flash. Bang. Four smooth jacket jackhammers
shatter the rose, peddling death
smash the heart, beating love
stealing away the happiness
you were planning to snatch
from the jaws of life lived dangerously.
The devil was in the details of your protection’s
killer apprehended not twenty minutes earlier
on the back road of the victory
for which your love labored.
Now you lie bleeding and dead.
Now she sobs, alive.

So, not very good, full of cliche and probably a bit awkward (I just wrote that and won’t edit it) but I wouldn’t have been able to write that were I in a happier mood. I wouldn’t have even considered it. It is an ironic fact that most of the best poets were depressed, drug addicted, dark sons of bitches. Something about seeing into the heart of emotion and the human condition requires a less than well adjusted, happy personality. Sure, not all poetry is written from a Sylvia Plath level of despair, but some of the most real assessments of humanity were given birth by humanity’s most tragic sons and daughters.

My point was that I am depressed. I’ve analogized depression like alcoholism and that is a very good comparison. People are born with a predilection towards being a drunk which they cannot help. I was born with a predilection towards depression. I am a poet. This is a part of who I am, which I cannot help or, to a certain degree, control. My depressive tendencies make me able to tap into my poet’s soul. Unfortunately, my depression usually overwhelms my poetical nature. Life’s a bitch, eh?

By the way, I am swearing more than I usually do. I grew up around religious people and still count my closest friends and family among the devout, so I am more attuned to how some people respond to profanity. Another symptom of dark depression is a loss of inhibition. Profanity is a vital and necessary part of all human language which seeks to express immediate, unarticulatable emotion, or sometimes degree of emotion, so as I am feeling a lot of deep emotion and am simultaneously uninhibited I swear more. I hope it doesn’t offend you, but it happens, it is human, and well, you should move on if you can’t stand it.

Well, this is degenerating quickly.

I do not censor myself here because I want anyone who reads this to understand what depression is like. I want to be honest about what I feel, and how that effects me. Tt isn’t always pretty or organized. It isn’t simple or comfortable. It is a condition that never lets up for a second, even if I start a day feeling great and sunny, I may not end the day like that. I usually crash, and burn hard. What goes up…and, well, you know the rest.

After having read through all that, I remembered my main point (yes, I had one): “and some days it doesn’t matter what I do, I end up happy or sad or both, so I blame the weather.”

I’m Phil, and I am depressed.

Read about a good day here. Check out my previous discussions of depression, what it looks like, and why I might be depressed.

Today is Different

I am depressed.

Today was a little bit different. I made the bed. I took out the trash and recycling. I straightened up the living room, and even put some dirty clothes in the dirty clothes bin. Today was a win.

I hear “and?” coming from the studio audience. To most people, this is routine: the everyday habits of responsible people. This is what adults do. Not children, not college students, but the image of the functioning, complete adult. Now, a lot of assumptions and preconceptions feed into that image that might not be entirely accurate, fair, or reasonable, but for the most part, I usually agree. I actually hate clutter. I need to have my things arranged neatly and precisely. I am all about presentation, making things appear just so. I don’t like piles of things lurking in corners or right out in the open. I’ve always sort of been this way. I am not, however, a clutter-nazi. I don’t go to extremes, and I let life happen. But bottom line: my default is not to let things lie.

Depression laughs at my default and kicks it in the balls. The piles of laundry taunt me. The unwashed dishes mock me. The bed berates me. The clutter clamours with noise. Usually all I can do is look at them and sigh and move somewhere where I can’t see them. Out of sight… Most of the time I simply cannot muster the motivation, the energy, or the motion necessary to perform mundane, easy, household chores. To me, the chores don’t seem easy or mundane. They seem monumental. Intractable. Insurmountable. Carving a cave out of a mountain with a pickax and doing the dishes appear to me to take about the same amount of time and effort. Objective reality does not invade this mental assessment. Reality cannot hope to compete with the cold, dark shadow of depressive evaluation.

With this, of course, comes feelings of guilt, inadequacy, failure, and weakness. I know, somewhere in my head, that doing the dishes is not like bashing rocks. I know it to be true. But I can’t make myself act on that information. And so I berate myself. I ridicule. I imagine that those who live with me hate my inability to do the little things. I feel that I am not measuring up. I feel like my life is therefore meaningless and worthless. I feel like a fuck up and an idiot child. The depression doesn’t have to work to get me down because my spirit has already fallen through the floor and is still falling.

But that is a typical day.

Today is a better day. I didn’t wake up with a smile. I didn’t see things in technicolor, birds didn’t sing. But I did pick something up and put it away. I did collect trash. I did walk it outside and toss it in the dumpster. And then I realized that I was actually doing all of those things. I became aware of it. It seemed normal because it was. But it was abnormal because I was able to do it. Normal for me is the once in a while opportunity. I have to come up to get to where most people are most of time. So I look around the apartment and instead of sighing, I feel content. Things look more refined, more like they should. I don’t have to hide from anything, because, as I look around, from all angles things look the same: in their place and quiet. There is nothing to hide from.

So, today is a good day. And I felt that was worth sharing.

If you are wondering what I am on about, check out my previous discussions of depression, what it looks like, and why I might be depressed.