It’s been just about a year since I’ve written
about my ongoing struggle with depression.
So how are things, you ask?
Just fine. Good. Mostly good. I think good.
I’ve been on Wellbutrin for over a year now. Three little white pills every
morning. I don’t ask questions; I just take them.
I think this is the way I’m supposed to feel. I
remember feeling like this before. I get happy and excited about things now. I
get sad sometimes, but the sadness seems appropriate. It comes and it goes. I’m
an introspective kind of guy, so a certain amount of ennui is in my makeup.
So, good I think. I’m feeling good.
But I have lost something over the last two
years. What depression took from me was my simple way of thinking about the
human psyche. Depression has made things messy for me, and it has made me much
more forgiving and gentle when I meet people who are emotionally out of control.
I used to think that the human mind divided
neatly into two spheres, a right and a left. It’s a metaphoric division, of
course, but yeah, two sides that one imagines could be pulled apart like two
halves of an orange. Left brain and right brain. Your basic dualism. That sort
of thing.
We think and we feel. We have reason and we
have emotion. Of the two kinds of human experience, the emotional part was not
to be trusted, as far as I was concerned. Not in relationships; not in daily
living; and most of all, not in the spiritual realm. I have always had a deep
fear and loathing of overly emotional religion.
Emotion, it seemed to me, was very arbitrary.
It often led you in the wrong directions. It made you do things that did not
make sense. Whereas the rational part of the human mind was careful and
reasoning and able to see truth, even through a fog of emotion.
I proudly labeled myself as a cerebral person.
I spent a lot of time thinking and talking and arguing and reasoning. Not so
much time feeling things. I thought I was in control of all that silly,
emotional stuff. I felt numb, mostly. And I assumed that you weren’t feeling
things unless you, well, FELT them.
Oh, you feel things. Here’s a shocker. No one
feels things in more dangerous ways than the person who thinks he feels nothing.
That’s the guy you have to watch out for.
Jung said it this way: If you do not come to
terms with your shadow side, the opposite of your strengths, you will be ruled
by that shadow side. I believe that now. In my case, all of my unexplored
feelings were sucked into a vortex of anger. Of course, I was too sophisticated
to let my anger out in healthy ways. So I ate my anger. I ate it dry. It was
like swallowing unshelled peanuts. It did not sit well in my gut.
That’s when depression exploded my simple ways
of thinking. You can say whatever you want about the emotional side of human
beings, but emotions rule the day. They dictate our actions FAR more than we
think. People live right out of their guts. We are primitive in that way.
When my depression became critical, it rose
from beneath me like a dark wave. It tossed me about, laughing at my feeble
words of protest. It kicked my ass, but good. I was unable to act in ways that
made sense. My feelings of sorrow and panic washed away my control like a
tsunami washes away the hammocks hanging near the beach.
I hid my sorrow as long as I could, and then I
began to pick compulsively at the skin on my right hand until it bled. It hurt
so bad, and I would swear I would never do it again. But then my left hand would
start creeping over to my right hand. I couldn’t stop it.
So much for Mr. Cerebral.
And then, just to make sure that my worldview
was completely shattered, that one stone was not left standing on another, and
that salt was sown in my fields, I began to think crazy thoughts. Depression
made me think crazy things.
THINK them.
I
Thought
Crazy
Things
I had thoughts that were not based in reality.
Do you know how frightening and horrifying that is to a person like me?
At one point I decided that my wife of twenty
years no longer loved me. I thought that, baby. THOUGHT IT.
And I thought that the people in my church
didn’t like me anymore and were probably talking about how to fire me without
totally devastating our family. I figured they would be nice in the way they did
it, but yes, people were talking about me and trying to find a way to get rid of
me.
Um, that’s some crazy shit. I am many things,
but unloved and unappreciated are not among them.
So I was wrong about all of it. The simple
division between thought and emotion, the control I thought I had by denying
things I felt, and my arrogant pride in thinking that I understood myself well
enough to have clear thoughts.
That’s what depression took from me.
What’s left? Let’s see…
A lot of humility and grace. I feel sorrow when
I see men whose faces are hard and whose anger is beyond their control. I wish I
could make them little boys again and hold them in my lap.
A new respect for people who deal well with
their emotions, trusting them and experiencing them and nurturing them.
Gratitude for how I feel. Feeling good is very
nice. I like it. I like to see my daughters and feel happy about it. I like to
look forward to doing things instead of just doing them because duty calls.
Silliness. I’m such a silly person. You can’t
believe how silly I am. I’m the silliest person in our whole family. Just a
silly, giddy, goofy, funny boy.
Spiritual joy. I feel a deep, wondrous joy
about my spiritual journey. Paying ritual homage to the power/intelligence
behind the cosmos is a rich and meaningful thing to me. It is closely tied to
humility. In the absence of any hope of figuring things out all by myself, I
join myself to pilgrims across the ages, singing songs, reciting poetry, and
telling sacred stories under the stars. Depression stole the joy from my faith,
and I'm glad to have it back.
And last, love. Love was left behind after the
depression went away. I’ve rediscovered love, and it’s like finding a baby bunny
hiding under a zucchini leaf. You may pick her up and hold her, but be very
careful. She’s trembling. But isn’t she the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen in
all your life?
rlp
I think that this will be my last depression
entry. I’ve said enough, and now is the time for living. If something happens
and I get in bad shape again, I’ll be honest and tell you about it. Until then,
if you don’t hear from me, assume that no news is good news.
