a simple man

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.

I am depressed.

I first wrote about my general depression history. Then, I tried to give an insider’s perspective on depression. Stephen Fry, a British comedian, author, actor, writer, tech enthusiast, and former depressed individual tweeted a link to an article about a member of the British Parliament who came out as being depressed, and how that is hardly unusual. It is a great, short article, and it does a good job of presenting another view of and on depression that is different than mine.

Being my third article specifically about depression, and my depression in particular, I guess I can christen this an official “thing” but that worries me.

A symptom of my depression is that I am always starting a new project. Right now I am two weeks into a daily picture taking project in which, at 1810 (6:10pm) I snap a picture with my iPhone and upload it to Twitter and Flickr. I am trying to capture the everyday activities of life, and I call it: My Life at 1810. See the set on Flickr. Two weeks in is usually when the bottom falls out. Dig around my Flickr and you will see a few other projects which I started and never finished, such as a picture a day, and a few others.

Because depression sucks the color, vigor, and excitement out of life, the only way I can feel a rush of vitality is to start something. Beginnings are heady with promise, with anticipation, with new ideas, and this infuses energy into the darkness. But without a genuine, clear thinking will that energy fades and cannot be sustained. That clear thinking will is what depression destroys every time. So the project dwindles, is abandoned, and becomes one more Ozymandias to mark the post apocalyptic landscape that is my life. This time around, with the picture a day thing, I have tried to outsmart myself my picking a project that, by definition, ends whenever I want it to end. Convenient, eh? I doubt that it will work, but that is just the depression talking.

All that to say, I don’t know how long I will be able to sustain this self aware series of posts about depression. I am not going to worry, though. I figure that any time I am writing is a good time, and writing about depression is a great way to self therapize, to remove stigma, and to perhaps help someone else who may be depressed and reading this to realize that they are not alone, there is hope, and that it needn’t be any more of a burden than it is already.

Why am I depressed? What a perfectly legitimate question for which I have no real answer. I am still working that out in my own mind, and in the overstuffed chair at my therapist’s office. (I tend to eschew the couch because it seems a bit too cliche.) I don’t know exactly why I am depressed.

The easy answers are of course: (genetic) brain chemistry, and traumatic life experiences. As we now know, thanks to medical science, our brains are finely tuned lumps of mush that run on electricity generated by the transfer of electrons through chemicals. Or something like that. I am no neurologist. But, these electrons are delicately transferred, and the chemical solutions and mixtures must be precisely balanced. Imbalance them, and then you’ve got missed signals, wrong signals, and all manner of unseemly cross firing and mental short outs. The result is known as a mental health disorder. This can just happen. Or, it can be made to happen. Violence, aggression, abandonment, neglect, abuse, stress, hostility, and other similar events can knock the chemical balance of the brain off kilter. Anyone could be walking down the street and have a wire come loose, or they can be hit and have one knocked loose. Genetics plays some role in this, as a predisposition towards depression can be inherited just like alcoholism can be passed on to the next generation. This is why alcoholics run in families and depression just sighs and watches the family stare out the window. One of my grandfathers was treated for depression, both of my parents were/are, and I am. Good chance that if I have kids, one of them might. But, of my siblings, not all of them seem to be affected. My mother’s depression was almost entirely as a result of trauma, my father’s was a bit of both. Mine certainly seems to be mostly trauma with a hint of genetics.

But that doesn’t really explain why. Science can tell me how, psychology can tell me what that looks like, but why is a question for a god. I don’t happen to believe in a god, so why becomes a question to simply be asked of the universe and left unanswered. Why did Steve Jobs go in the direction of computer hardware design and not mathematics? Why did Ghandi become a peace activist? Why did Mother Teresa join the Catholic church and move to India? Why did Alexander feel a need to conquer the world? Why am I depressed? Life is unbelievably complex and interconnected. I can tell you about abuse, I can tell you about fear, I can tell you about religious persecution (in that religion persecuted me) but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Many people are abused in some fashion, and not all of them end up paralyzed by depression. All of them need therapy, but some move past their abuse rather quickly, all things considered, and lead fulfilled, self-actualized lives. A lot of people reject a life of oppressive religion to embrace a freedom and a happiness that never looks back. So why did those things so effectively captivate me? Other people have genetic predispositions to a great many ailments and afflictions that never materialize. Not everyone in an alcoholic family becomes an alcoholic. So why do I get drunk on despair? Why me?

Why?

At the moment, I am not angry when I ask that, I am not screaming out to a god. I am not in despair. That could be because depression robs me of an ability to actually feel much of anything, but right now I am also very curious. I know some reading this, and who know me but not intimately, are very curious. “Really, Phil? How is it that you are depressed?” and, honestly, I ask that question of myself fairly often.

I fall into the same trap that snares people who have no idea what depression is or how it works. They wonder: “ok, you know you are depressed, why can’t you just snap out of it? why can’t you start being happy and get over it? why can’t you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and be a man/woman?” Heh. If only it were that easy. But it isn’t. Most days, I am powerless. My therapist Julia is helping me to take back my power, to exert it over my life, but that is like teaching a paraplegic to walk. It takes monumental effort, time, and patience. I can’t just be happy. I have to learn what happy is, and learn how to be it. And, for the record, nobody ever pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps. The whole idea is complete nonsense and is a cruel, evil philosophy. Everybody gets help to do almost everything in this life. The bootstraps are a lie.

I know some reasons why I am depressed. I know some of how it works. But I don’t know why I, in particular, won the mental unhealth jackpot. And I can do nothing about it without help.

Today’s monologue is all over the place, and a bit unfocused. Today I am only half there. Here. Whatever: point being, this is depression: sometimes I just can’t think.

Sigh. I am depressed.

I am depressed.

I previously wrote a brief history, or encapsulation, of my depression and tried to give reasons as to why I am suddenly talking, or writing, about it.

I don’t know how obvious it is that a depressed person is depressed; I don’t know if some of you reading this are shocked that I am, or surprised, or for how many that sort of makes sense, given my peculiar personality and demeanor. All I know is, I tried to keep a lid on my particular problem for a long time and now I am coming right out and saying it: I’m depressed.

But I also don’t know how many of you actually understand what that even means. I guess the general understanding is the “blues” and not the cool music from Harlem, New Orleans, or Kansas City, but a glum, sort of not happy feeling. Some people say they feel “down” or “sad” or that they are “in a funk” and by all these terms mean that they are depressed. The word itself means “in a physically lower position, having been pushed or forced down” and, secondarily, “in a state of general unhappiness or despondency” which sort of makes sense. In a literal, physical sense, if you push down on something you are depressing it. A depressed personality is one that feels pushed down. I have no unique claim to this feeling. As I’ve mentioned, many people are familiar with a blue, pushed down feeling, at least, for a period of time.

I am more than depressed. I am clinically depressed. All that means is my depression is a condition. It is a mental health problem. Like alcoholism, it is something you are born with or can develop through no fault of your own. It doesn’t go away. It doesn’t really get better. Wikipedia says it this way:

“Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person’s thoughts, behavior, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, worried, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless. They may lose interest in activities that once were pleasurable; experience loss of appetite or overeating, have problems concentrating, remembering details, or making decisions; and may contemplate or attempt suicide. Insomnia, excessive sleeping, fatigue, loss of energy, or aches, pains or digestive problems that are resistant to treatment may be present.”

My life is a constant haze of pain and darkness. I have daily headaches, frequent back and joint pain, and never feel quite right. Mentally, everything seems black, which is really hard to describe to those who have no idea what that is like. In trying to explain it, I came up with a metaphor. I am not sure how helpful it really is, but it seems roughly analogous to me.

I live in a room. This room has a very low ceiling, no windows, no light, only a single door on one wall. Most of the time this door is shut and I am in darkness. Occasionally, this door is barely open, and I can dimly discern a hint of light. It is grey, smogish light, but light nonetheless. On bad days, the door is open, and there is light, but it is like looking through a translucent curtain. On ok days, the door is open and beautiful light pours through. This is fairy tale light, with little twinkling dust motes, and beyond, a far green country, a blue sky, and the most delicious warmth. But I don’t feel it. I am inside the room, and I can only see out. On good days, I stand right at the threshold to the door. I experience the wind, the light, the warmth, but dimly, like I’ve been novocained. On great days, I can get halfway outside the door. This is my mental habitat. Most days for me are somewhere between total darkness and bad days. I had a great day once, last month, the only one I’d had in months. Rarely I get ok days.

Another way I usually describe my depression is as a feeling of inertia. One of Isaac Newton’s laws of motion states that “an object at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force” and that works for rocks and me. Unless I get a good push, I’m going nowhere. And for me, that push has to be disproportionately large. I sit around. I stare at nothing. Sometimes I walk across the room, just to walk back. I stare out the window and think about nothing. I have no motivation, even less inclination. Like Wikipedia says, I feel empty and restless. Things I know I love and enjoy seem hollow. The gloss and the shine is gone. I think of a hundred things to do and spend three hours deciding to do none of them. A day is an unending string of exhausting moments spent doing nothing.

But I don’t choose to live this way. There is no conscious choice. Conscious choice is a fantasy, a thing hoped for, the incentive waiting at the end of the decathlon. I have to work hard and strenuously to get to the point where I can make a conscious choice about something.

Deep inside my mind, the real me still lives. Like Thor (in the Avengers), trapped in the Hulk’s cage, there is thick glass and 30,000 feet of empty air beneath me. But inside that prison, a half-remembered me slams a hammer against the wall, fighting for freedom. I remember what it was like to love things, to derive pleasure. To really enjoy to write, or to build with LEGO, or to revel in the physicality of movement. I have hundreds of creative ideas: pictures I want to take, paintings to be splashed on canvas, stories to write down, LEGO creations to build, crafts to construct, but they all bounce off the ceiling and crash into a pile of their mates at my feet until the weight of them smothers me. And I catch my breath and realize that I am in an empty glass cage staring at 30,000 feet of air.

What a bleak picture. Usually I don’t notice, because as I’ve said before, this is normal for me. This is my everyday experience. I’ve gotten used to it. I hardly know how to react when the depression lifts and I can think clearly again, it is such an unusual experience. Remember that great day I said I had, once in many months? I spent half of it wondering what had drastically gone wrong while I slept. Feeling happy, coherent, lucid, and unburdened scared the hell out of me. It felt so very, very wrong. Eventually I stopped thinking about it and just enjoyed it, having a great day, but I knew it wouldn’t last. I also knew that no matter what, I had to get to a point where that was the new normal.

But that seems so far away, and to be an insurmountable challenge.

Even this, writing about my depression, seems weird. Not the writing about the depression thing, but the writing thing. I wanted to do it. I am doing it. In a few minutes I will have done it. This doesn’t usually happen. It might be another few months before I write again. I have no way of telling, and I have no way to make this happen again. Sometimes I can break through, mostly I can’t.

I’ve developed patience. Depression is a waiting game. Without help, and usually drugs, I am helpless against it. All I can do is stand in my room, wait in my glass prison, and watch life pass me by, waiting for those few times when I can step outside of my depression and experience something resembling happiness, which I take for all I can, because at any moment I can be kicked off the ride.

So when I say that I am depressed, that is usually what I mean, generally speaking.

I’m depressed.

It has taken me a very long time to realize this simple fact, let alone process it, and be able to externalize it. You see, for most people, what they feel, how they react, what they do every single day, in any given moment, feels like normal to them. In a way, it is normal in that there is no global, standardized measure of human normality. Everyone has their own normal, their own equilibrium within themselves and with their environment. To me, being depressed was normal. I assumed that was how I was supposed to feel; I thought that is what the world looked like; I figured that was simply the way of things. For most of my life the fact that there was a different way to life, a better way, simply didn’t occur to me. I knew other people, I observed my friends, my family, random people I didn’t even know, and even though a great many of them were acting and living on a completely different plane of existence than I did, it didn’t occur to me that this wasn’t simply their normal and that it was different than mine. Some were female and I wasn’t, or gay and I wasn’t, or happy and I wasn’t. I didn’t know that happy was something I could be. I just knew I wasn’t, and that is was something I would have to live with my entire life.

I know better now. For one thing, I am an adult. I’ve graduated high school and two different institutions of higher learning (though that sounds 50% better than it actually is) so I am slightly more educated than I was as a 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 year old. Knowing better, for me, was a gradual enlightenment, like a lightbulb controlled by a dimmer switch slowly sheds light on a greater volume of a room.

As a kid, and a teen, I just got black sometimes. Deep, dark, brooding, simmering sadness that turned to rage that turned to helplessness, emptiness, and profound despair. Then, sometimes, I would sleep, and the next day things seemed less grim. I always used to say that “it’ll be ok, I’m always better in the morning” even though that wasn’t strictly the case. Nowadays medical care professionals and therapists always ask me “Do you ever think about hurting yourself or others? Do you ever feel like killing yourself?” and while on occasion that has been true, it isn’t really my thing. I’ve never wanted to hurt anybody, not for long, and I’ve got just a bit too much grasp on life to want to give it up. I like movies and Jules Verne, and I’d never forgive myself if I killed myself and they finally made a good adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Hey, nobody said I had to have a good or particularly meaningful reason to live. Any reason will do, as far as I can tell. But anyway, I just thought periodic heavy darkness was a part of my life. I went there, I brooded, and eventually I moved on. It wasn’t until later that I began to see that not everyone existed that way, and there wasn’t any reason why I had to.

But, just knowing that you are depressed and could be happy is no salvation. Enlightenment is no substitute for fundamental life change. It just means that you can tell exactly how badly things are skewed. Helpful, but not transformative. And as a poor college student with very little time, no employment, no access to health care, and a culture that doesn’t like to talk too much about mental health, I didn’t have any options. As a college graduate with few job prospects, time, but still no health care, I had no options. It wasn’t until I got married and my wife got a job with benefits that included health care, and even the possibility of consulting with a mental health professional that I had any hope that my normal might change, that I might get to create a new normal. It still took a ridiculously long time to cut through red tape, assure people that don’t know me that I am not faking, that I really do have mental health issues, and then find someone I could, in the span of 45 minutes of conversation, feel I could trust enough to bare my deepest, darkest soul to, but I have made it.

Her name is Julia. I tell her things. She asks me questions. Some days we make progress, sometimes we don’t. We talk superficially and about minor symptoms of my depression, and very occasionally she guides me into something deeper. It is a process, a long road, and hard work. I continually have bad, dark days. Rarely, the sun shines through. I’m learning to take both in stride.

This evening I viciously and suddenly threw an empty plastic bottle as hard as I could across the room. It was like hitting a whiffle ball. You can put all the effort you want into the swing of your whiffle bat, but it is still just going to float away. I’ve had a bad, annoying, frustrating, irritating day of being depressed today. I kept it bottled up, I ignored it, but Julia says I shouldn’t reject the depression any more than I should reject the happiness, so I let it all out with a petty, ineffective gesture of acceptance. And I felt a little better. Like I said, I’m learning. Ignoring feelings and keeping them locked away doesn’t help. Acknowledging them and experiencing them helpfully does. So I do.

Why was today so bad and depressing? It is really hard to explain to someone who doesn’t understand chronic depression, but it’s like this: I watched an episode of the West Wing this evening. It is an American television show about the business side of the White House and the United States government which I have recently started watching and very much enjoy. The fictional President’s Chief of Staff, a man named Leo, is an alcoholic. So far in the show he has been sober for many years, but as alcoholics are, he is always one drink away from drunk. In the episode I watched, he received divorce papers from his wife, and the rest of the staff were gently, and respectfully, checking in on him to reassure him that while the divorce hurt, it wasn’t a reason to start drinking. Leo’s response? “I’m an alcoholic. I don’t need a reason.” I’m depressed. I don’t need a reason.

For some time now, I have been following the life of a woman named Maurissa Tancharoen. (Wikipedia) (Twitter). Some of you may have heard of a little nerdy movie called the Avengers. It was written and directed by a man named Joss Whedon. His brother is Jed Whedon. Maurissa is Jed’s wife. Maurissa was diagnosed with a very severe and debilitating case of lupus. It constantly interferes with her life and what she loves to do, namely act, sing, and write. But, Maurissa refuses to be kept down by her physical condition. She fights: sometimes she wins, sometimes she loses, but she doesn’t usually give up. It is a war she will never win as there is no cure for lupus (yet) but she fights. And she writes about it on a little blog she calls “It’s Not Sexy”. Read it here: It’s Not Sexy.

Maurissa is a tiny Asian woman, but when it comes to bravery, she kicks my ass. But, I think she might be on to something. Sharing the trials and tribulations of an affliction is not a pity party. It is not a “woe is me” or a call for attention. Fundamentally, it is a statement. An acknowledgement: “here I am, weak and broken”.

Aren’t we all just shiny, happy people? By which I mean, do we not all have our troubles? Judge not, but find compassion. Come, let us love one another. This isn’t some religious bullshit or bleeding heart hippyism. This is just a call to humanity. I am human. I struggle daily. I am depressed. But I won’t be beat, and I won’t give up. I’m going to keep going, because I know that there is something better, something to be gained, and this is my own particular road to hell…and back. I’m coming back, through, past, beyond – I won’t be beat. I have no answers for you; I have no pride; I have no wisdom to impart. All I have are people who love me, people whom I love, a wonderful woman named Julia who is my therapist, and a will to live.

So, listen to me if you wish, but know that whatever bothers you, I write so that you know you are not alone. That much I know with absolute assurance. We can figure out the rest together.