Brief note...

I see it is over a month since I posted anything.  I can report no change in my condition.  It is as if I resigned from life rather than being resigned to it.

I quite smoking but put on 30 lbs.  Talk about a devil's bargain!

I rarely go online anymore--it is too much work and too much contact.

Thanks to all who still visit and care.

Craig

Spammers Blocked?

I changed my password but think spammers still get through.  Don't know how to stop them.

As for my condition, I am paralyzed with fear despite copious medications.  It's a little better at night with some brandy and numbness and television.  I read pulp fiction during the day.  Attend a couple JC classes that I don't understand and am too anxious to actually study for.

I'm in therapy but it is more hand-holding to prevent suicide.

If it weren't for the love of my wife I would no longer be here.  Kathleen is a saint. 

I do not understand how people can get up in the morning, stretch and mutter "carpe diem."  I have no interest in anything and nothing to seize.  I do my utmost to avoid pain and responsibility, but in the end they are inescapable.

I am in hell.  The smallest tasks fill me with trepidation.  Showering.  Brushing my teeth.  It's a miracle I practice personal hygiene at all.

I can't seem to organize anything or make decisions about anything.  It's as if I've lost my soul, at least my conscious deciding ego.  Sometimes I just flip a coin to make a decision, as it doesn't matter to me, and randomness is as good as anything since I can't think clearly.

Terrified--beyond Kilorats into some fear state I cannot adequately describe.

And how was your day?

CE

Apology

I apologize for letting my blog be taken over by penile spammers.

At least a man can hide his shame in his pants, whereas women can't help but display the size of their tits.  And don't think it doesn't matter--studies show women with big ones have more power and get promoted more often, yada yada. 

Hard not to sexualize an object at some level.

I would report on myself and say this: I suffer from abulia.  I lack will, will to live, will to act.  I have no remedy but get lots of advice.  I don't know what to do with myself.  Bored out of my mind and no real work.  Washing the dishes is the greatest demand, and taking out the trash, and walking the dog. 

The less I do, the less I can do.  It is a paralyzing spiral.  Actually getting online today was a big exception.  Typing something even more daring.  I seem to lack the courage to engage in life.  I have taken infantile denial to a new level.  If I close my eyes the world does not exist.  Yet it doesn't work entirely; I know the world exists though I close my eyes in the hope it will not bite me, but I see its slavering fangs through the pink tissue of my eyes, and I know I am being eaten up. 

Enough metaphor. 

Enough.

8 kilorats.

CE

Depression, continued...

I have written reams about depression.  I still have no answer though I have been flooded with information.  Sadly, none of the information seems to benefit me.  I have lost the will to live.

I recall Melville's story of Bartleby the Scrivener.  Here was a man with a bone-tiring occupation of copying figures all day.  One day, for no reason it seems, he quit doing his job.  When his employer upbraided him for sitting and doing nothing, telling him to get to work, he blandly replied: "I prefer not to."  And from that point on, his life degenerated because he had said the great "No" to the universe.

I feel like Bartleby.  I cannot engage with life.  I have no ambition other than to survive another day.  My thoughts constantly condemn me, I think I have lost hope.  I don't think I've ever quite passed this existential Rubicon before.  Hope is the condition for survival; without it we are lost.  Hence I am lost.

Life, frankly, terrifies me.  The smallest tasks have become so anxiety-ridden I don't know how I perform them.  Washing the dishes is an overwhelming undertaking.  I do not know what to do with my free time, which is almost all my time.  I cannot write a lick of poetry, my music is moribund, my creativity vanished. 

There is no magic bullet for me--neither medications nor therapy.  Of course, I do both, but with little or no result.  My therapist sympathizes with my plight and tries to make me make an alliance with my observing ego over and above my experiential ego, to stand back and say, "That's your depression talking.  Don't go there."  Yet it seems I am helpless to resist the spiral of self-consumption, unable to distinguish the better or more objective me from the me of experience.

I'm blogging today in an attempt to give expression, to in effect organize my plight.  But again I suffer from paucity of thought.  I don't have much to say.  If people call I can hardly carry on a conversation.

Depressed people must be the most boring people on earth.

Self-consumption, self-obsession--a human is designed to look outside himself, to act upon his environment, to engage materially and socially.  I cannot.  Thank God I can still read. 

Having given up alcohol and other vices, cigarettes remain my last comfort, though they are killing me.  They taste bad and I cough and wheeze.  But they are a momentary oral satisfaction, just as food.  I can still eat.  I have become infantilized. 

I feel I ought to be institutionalized until I can somehow improve.  Yet I was institutionalized for 45 days last February and March with little result.  And twelve courses of ECT could not shake me out of depression.

Depression is an inadequate word to express the horror in which I exist.  Brain fever or melancholic seizure or simply "hell" better fits the state.  I cannot seem to will myself to will myself to live.  Suicidal thoughts plague me, indeed I am committing slow suicide through continuing to smoke.  I want an end; I would welcome death but am morally opposed to suicide, not only because it is the most selfish act one can commit but because it leaves loved ones holding the bag of guilt and sorrow.  My father committed suicide.  I envy him but refuse to succumb.  In fact my goal, my only goal at present it seems, is survival--and my chief accomplishment is not to commit suicide.

Last night my wife nearly forced me to attend a local open mic affair where I played three original songs to a great reception.  But it was not me playing; it was some robot mouthing the lyrics and strumming the chords.  Praise from others did not affect me.  I suppose criticism would have had a greater effect, since I twist everything into self-criticism in any case.

I have prayed and prayed but am entirely aware of the truth that "God helps those who help themselves."  Yet I don't know how to help myself, and when I contemplate activities, the chronic pain in my spine severely limits what I can do.  I can't volunteer to help extirpate local invasive flora, for instance, for digging would put me on my back for a day.

I did have two miraculous weeks from late September through early October when I popped out of my depression suddenly, and I thought it would last.  I was so relieved to be out of it!  Suddenly the darkness lifted and it was as if the whole experience had been unreal.  Just as suddenly the mood shift abandoned me. 

In those two weeks, among other things, I bought a wetsuit for local diving, I made arrangements to play with other musicians, I started a support group for depression, I was suddenly engaged in life.  But that life was taken from me.  I think of the story, "Flowers for Algernon," where the retarded man becomes intellectually gifted from a medication, but eventually the medication wears off and he sees himself descend from intellectual heights back to his former state and can do nothing to stop his fall. 

If you are not clinically depressed, fall down on your knees and give thanks to God.  I certainly would.  My greatest joy is not to be depressed.  I know of no worse disease, truly, and I have seen them all as a physician.  Depression is the soul-destroyer; do everything you can to maintain your optimism in the face of trying circumstances, let nothing drag you down into the pit of self-obsession, do everything you can to stay engaged with life, no matter how lowly your occupation, your disability, your situation.  Hang on to hope with your fingernails if you must; this is essential, for once you fall, you will certainly fall again, as most severe clinical depressions recur at some point in one's life after the first.  In fact clinical studies agree that after one depression a patient ought to be put on maintenance medication to prevent a recurrence--for life.

Depression damages the brain anatomically.  In autopsy studies, the central emotional regulator, the amygdala, has shrunk up to 20% in depressives.  This is a real disease, as real as tuberculosis and in my view, more deadly.  30% or more of bipolars die from it, either by accident in the manic phase or suicide in the depressive one.  Childhood leukemia has far better results in terms of treatment.

I did not want to write this today.  I wrote it for my own "health."  I do not know how it can help others, though folks have told me that my experience has somehow helped them.  May it be so.

To survive another day.  My goal.

Beyond kilorats,

CE

Vicissitudes

For no obvious reason I could determine, I popped out of my nine-month suicidal depression for a little over two weeks, but they ended precipitously on October 13, curiously the anniversary date of Kathleen leaving me when I was manic.

I was lying on the couch listening to her singing as she cooked.  Then I thought, "What if I were to lose her?"  Then without warning, though I tried to hold on, I felt myself spiraling back to oblivion where I have been since, an oblivion worse for having tasted normality ever so briefly.

This is a puzzling disease.  I was myself for two weeks, then suddenly I am not--lost again in the morass of unendurable self-annihilating miasma, back to suicidal thoughts, complete disorganization of the mind, the horrors, the inability to make a decision, lack of interest in all things, terrified of everything and nothing.

Nothing really changed except my mood, but I must have been extremely vulnerable, and I don't know if the anniversary reaction helped trigger it or not.

Now I am toughing it out again, have gone back on antipsychotics for survival's sake, and today, thank God, I was a little less worse than yesterday.

Back to 6 Kilorats,

CE

Surviving Depression

Accept. Endure.
By acceptance you de-fang the monster of the mid-brain who dwells in your very DNA, the inevitable inheritance of the reptile within, which accuses us constantly of failure in our dark times.

Depression is an evil in need of healing. To accept evil is not to bow to evil; to deny evil is to bow. The devil cannot fool those who believe in him.

The chief human problem is not lust, or desire, as Buddha averred, no--it is imperfection, how we hold ourselves accountable for aspects of our nature ungoverned by will, how we punish ourselves for lacking the wisdom to avoid tragedy only after the tragedy has passed. There is no predestination but living out our natures. To suffer our brokenness is the ultimate acceptance, knowing the self that survives is the true self, undeterred by the opinions of others, immune to reputation, inured to criticism (though always ready to examine itself if not mood-impaired).

Too many fail at suffering because they lack endurance. Suffering begs for the easy way out, whether by religion or a bottle of booze. Unendurable pain can be endured; if not, the human body will pass into unconsciousness. The worst part of suffering is fear: fear makes pain more painful in its apprehension. This is living in the future. All we can bear is the present. If we can endure the present for one more minute, we can endure for another, and stitching minutes together we can endure for as long as required.

In the case of a good man, suffering is rarely deserved. To link behavior to just deserts is a fatal mirage, one that Job shattered. One must accept illogical, individualized suffering as no more than one’s due in this life. Humility demands this.

Blaming God for our suffering diminishes him; blaming ourselves feeds our narcissism; blaming others is futile, they are only agents. What we can do is endure, when all pride is gone, when all options are spent, when suicide endeavors to seduce us with a false peace.

Accept. Endure.


Thine at 1 Kilobunny,
 
CE

New Publications

Flowers of Heraclitus in The Flea

Feature (five poems) and essay in Blue Fifth Review

I have been silent a long while while spambots invade this blog. 

My silence has been a reflection of the fact that I have written enough about depression for a lifetime.

I am presently emerging from a near year-long suicidal depression by the grace of God and a fortuitous concatenation of circumstances, of which I can only say, no doctor could explain it, no poet can contain it, it is, simply, a quite irrational miracle.

Carry on!  There is always hope, even when you can't feel it.

Thine as always,

Craig Erick