Improvement?

For nearly a week now I have been essentially relieved of depression, but in October of 2011 I had a two-week reprieve that vanished as quickly as it came, so I am loathe to trust the experience.  I am unspeakably grateful for these few days but equally concerned about relapse, a concern that curiously might lead to relapse--if I let it.

My therapist says: Shrink the abyss.  Embrace the abyss.

Embrace the abyss?  The soul destroyer, the black hole, the unworld?  Embrace the continuing crucifixion of consciousness?  The horror of unself?

She's trying to convince me that I have power over depression, but in my experience I don't.  It pisses me off that she thinks I have or should have control.  That's like blaming the victim.  Depression is mind rape.  It comes from a place I don't understand and returns there when it leaves. 

This latest reprieve is a direct result of a change in medication.  So how can I control the abyss?  I don't prescribe for myself.  Yet I must do something to insure, further, support my healing--what do I do?  How should I act?  What do I say to myself?

In my last reprieve it was the thought of losing my wife that sent me down again.  That she wasn't going to leave me didn't matter, despite all assurances.  The thought was so devastating that my emotions leaped ahead and took control of my brain and pushed me back into the unspeakable horror of depression.  I was blindsided.  Where is the punch coming from now?  Or is there some way to defend myself?  Yet to think defensively is also to give depression power.

Best to accept this day and my improved mood for what they are: here and present.  Best to be and not evaluate, not dwell, not presume, neither indulge nor repress but breathe in and out and tell myself that euthymia can be sustained. 

I am so grateful for this relief, I cannot tell you.  Just to have a moment without fear, where my mind is at rest.  Just to go shopping and pick out a few foods I prefer, like anchovies for my salad and artichokes.  And to cook without the paranoia that I won't be able to cook.  To walk and not look behind me.  To have the condemnatory committee in my head shut up for once.  The silence is deafening. 

Curioser and curioser,


Grateful CE

2 Kilorats?

Poem: To Rise

To Rise

Spine straight I gazed
at the cloud cover back-hued with light
and wished to be translated
in moment, in the twinkling of an eye--
Lord take me I said
as the calendulas threw praise
and bright blue lobelia exploded skyward
while poppies raised their jagged leaves,
bulbs heavy with sap
milky as semen
as the tufted grass extended its spiny crowns
to the mottled light--
Take me I said, take me,
I am an open-armed child
reaching past the apple tree past blooming,
whose green limbs strain
in transpiration of invisible incense
offered to the invisible.

Yes to rise to God’s pocket
where the loose change of saints
jangles in praise,
up to the white-gold light
above the many-fingered lupine leaves
and thick heather of a thousand blossoms
both clawing, crying for lost stars
behind the sheer undergarments of clouds
thinned to diaphones.

Dizzy from a cigarette
I thought I would rise
and nearly floated up,
past the demons’ chorus
in my intransigent head,
nearly I joined the praise
of yellow nasturtiums and pink sea thrift
for the dissipating light
wreathed in wisps of vapor,
the thin creamery of clouds.

I might have been free,
I would have been free
from a thousand eventualities sucking at my feet,
weighing me down with inconsequential
harvests of chronic indecision,
the gum of existence, but this poem
like a million poems
only echoes the imaginary chrysalis
from which we might be born
and ends with a whimpering bang.

Poem: "The Lying Glass"

I notice I last blogged 11/28/12.  I managed to get through Christmas, visiting my daughters, and have survived until now without attempting suicide, though I have been sorely tempted and have even done research on methods, indeed have at hand the necessary combination for my demise.  Why do I persist in living?  This question may seem utterly strange to those who have not navigated these dark waters, but to me it appears unanswerable.  The short answer is to spare my wife and children pain; the practical answer is that my wife would be destitute without my income; the deep answer is perhaps, just perhaps, I haven't entirely given up hope.

Yet the grand mistake I made in this, the Mother of All Depressions, is to have given up hope.  Yes, I despaired.  If there is an unforgivable sin, this must be it.  Saying "No" to God's creation, "No" to life and its unremitting requirements, "No" even to survival.  One of my delusions is that I already have cancer, though no identifiable symptoms.  Another is that I have to move and cannot organize my possessions in any way or imagine the burden of moving, not to mention I wouldn't know where.  Another delusion is that I am already dead and my body being animated by a ghost.  I am a ghost in the machine of my body, or worse, the ghost of a ghost of a ghost. 

I am amazed at everyday people who go about their business coping or even trying to improve their lives.  I am jealous of near everyone, wishing I could be them, from the ratty bearded homeless man with the shopping cart to the paraplegic in his wheelchair.  I have said many times that I would gladly have both legs amputated to be free of depression.  For I find that a severe psychotic depression like my own is an amputation of self.  Thus I find myself imitating my wife, mirroring her behavior since I left the hospital two years ago.  If she reads, I read.  If she smokes a cigarette, I join her.  Monkey see, monkey do.  I cannot seem to originate thoughts or actions which seem my own.  My head is full of truisms and cliche's to the point of madness:

God helps those who help themselves.

Grow or die.

He who isn't busy being born is busy dying.

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

And so forth. 

Another delusion is that I have Alzheimer's.

Use it or lose it.

I seem to have lost it.  And here I sit, typing.

In being alienated from myself I am also alienated from everything.  I often wonder if this is self-pity.  People tell me I suffer from an illness that is not my fault.  I reply, "But it is my responsibility!"  Which puts the ball squarely in my court.

How do I spend my days?  Television (mainly basketball) and cheap fiction (mainly mysteries).  Yet I remember so little, it is like a faint wind that blows through my brain and leaves only the finest silt behind--like remembering that Chris Paul was the MVP of the NBA's All Star game. 

I am no longer conversant in poetry, philosophy, medicine or religion.  I suppose I am only conversant in my psychotic symptoms and basketball.  My world has become so small it would be dwarfed by angels on a pin.  In geometry I would be a point, not even a line. 

Past experience taught me that miraculously, depression lifts one day--sometimes through medication, once by electricity, but never has it lifted through therapy.  I have been in therapy for two years without result save that I haven't tried to kill myself.  But in that time I have surely devolved.  I look at my garden, gone to seed, and do nothing.  I look at my bills and responsibilities and hide.  I won't even look at my bank account.  I'm terrible with money.  I eat and smoke out of boredom.  I quit drinking 90 days ago and have attended AA meetings, but I don't get the program, and besides, I am sober but not clean, since I take addictive medication for pain and anxiety.  My dominant feeling state is fear, but the antipsychotic medicine makes that more bearable, even if it makes me less human as it has dried up my tears.  All of this bores me beyond words.  I feel I am a human sacrifice to the existential dilemma of living. 

Man needs hope to live; man needs new experiences and challenges to thrive.  Man cannot really exist as a couch potato, which I have become.  I avoid every pressure I can unless it becomes absolutely necessary--as in the case of electricity being shut off or a flat tire.  Or perhaps a medical emergency, as when I took my wife to the ER this past Sunday for fear she had broken her ankle.  But even such activities, rarely demanded, seem unreal, as if I were observing myself from a distant planet.  And from that planet I appear as a grease smear on asphalt, a little oily bug, a sudden apparition without substance or being.  How can these things be?  As I said, I am psychotic.  As psychotic as I was during my mania in 2010, when I believed I was the new improved messiah for the age.  Yes, I believed that with all my soul just as I now believe that I lack a soul, that I am hollowed out like a stack of Russian dolls, that nothing I express is genuine.  Indecision and paralysis rule.  I can't make sense out of anything.  By avoiding pain and responsibility I have increased it tenfold.  But I don't know how to stop my downward spiral, truly, I don't know how to stand up like a man and say, "Enough!  I will face my life!  I will do my taxes!  I'll pretend to live even if I feel dead."

Feelings are overrated, I think.  It is will and action that count.  Once you lose your will to live, all else collapses, trust me.  You don't want to go there.  "Hold on to your dreams, for if dreams die / Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly."  --Langston Hughes

Ah to have dreams again!  Ambitions!  Goals!  I am so thoroughly becalmed, so lost in the Horse Latitudes that I cannot leave the starting gate.

P. T. Barnum once charged suckers to see a horse "with its head where its tail ought to be."  He turned the horse around in its stall and attached a feed bag to its tail.  People were so embarrassed after paying that they wouldn't tell the others who followed.

Here behold a man with an ass where his head ought to be. 

Do you pity me?  Do you laugh at me?  Fault me for cowardice?  Have compassion?  Fear not, all responses are welcome.  I seem immune to intervention and advice.  I cannot grasp a twelve-step program, which requires hope.  I would like to drink but resist, yet as I said above, given my medications, I do not think I am clean.  "That's all right," others say, "that's between you and your doctor."  But is it?  Is it right to take medication for anxiety because you can't handle life?  Isn't that just like drinking?  Or narcotics because your pain is too severe to endure?  Isn't that capitulation to the poppy?

I long to be human again but I am an alien without feelings, self-indulgent and self-centered, avoiding pain and fear at all costs, lost in television and cheap fiction. 

I used to have an expansive mind; I used to love others and sometimes myself; I used to be and do a lot of things, but now I am no more than a shriveled balloon from an ancient birthday party discarded by the roadside, yet due to synthetic rubber, unable to be assimilated completely by nature, unnaturally pink against the brown dirt.  All these metaphors are inadequate, of course.  I am the living dead, I am a zombie, I am bloodless, I am an abject worm.  My therapist tells me, "You are not your depression.  That's stinkin'  thinking'.  But in my state I know no other thoughts. 

Sometimes late at night I have a thought that maybe things could be different the next day, maybe I could act, join a gym, quit smoking, write something, be something, serve somehow.  I don't know how.  What I do now is make coffee for an AA meeting once a week and help my wife as I am able.  But I'm not able to do much--taking out the trash and washing the dishes are big hurdles.  I rarely change my clothes.  I look like a slob.  I shower often enough (and that is an extreme challenge) so that I don't stink.  Sometimes I brush my teeth.  Sometimes I even floss.  But when I do, I think, "Why should I care when I really want to die?"  And then I think, "If I'm condemned to go on living it's a good idea to take care of my teeth."  You can see how the debate about living leaks into the smallest tasks. 

I think I'll quit there.  As I've said many times, depression is boring.  And depressives the ultimate bore.  Best to laugh at us, or with us; I like to be teased about it.  That gives me some perspective.  But most are afraid to tease us for fear of insensitivity.  Believe me, the depressive is insensitive to your laughter because he takes himself far too seriously and laughter would mean perspective and perspective would mean health.

What is health?  The ability to laugh at oneself.  The ability to receive a gift without the need to repay it.  The ability to love and be loved.  The ability to conceive of tasks and carry them out.  As Freud said, "To love and to work."  The depressive, that is, the severe depressive, can do neither.  He is in Plath's bell jar, he is walled off from himself and others, he is incapable of human sympathy or connection, he fears phone calls--(indeed if my wife weren't deaf I wouldn't answer the phone, I do it for her sake).  Nor do I call my friends or family except on rare birthdays or holidays.  I know at some level there are people I love, but I have no feelings for them and this makes me ashamed.  I think I am beyond feeling for myself as well.  I am numb, zombified, so distanced from myself that I do not perceive myself as having a self.  There, I repeat myself again....self, self, self, self!  That is the main problem.  There is too much "me" to go around.  Extroversion and extrospection are the only healthy approaches to life.  Introversion and introspection maybe healthy on occasion for the normal, but for the depressive they are poison.  The well is poisoned by a preoccupation with the self which, paradoxically, makes the self no more.  Only a vacuum remains after the ruminative accumulation of self-judgment and self-despite.  Do not take this road.  Save yourselves.  Look outwards for salvation, look to things and people and works and engagement.  Perhaps rare saints can meditate on the goodness within, but there I find only the cobwebs of Miss Havisham's cake. 

Below, a rare poem I recently wrote for reasons unknown; I can't speak of its quality, but it was a rare achievement in my condition:

The Lying Glass

Reclined upon the sofa
I heard a strange eruption
behind me, to my left.
My dog leapt at the desk
and on the windowsill
I saw a small brown whirling,
twisting against glass, a dull sparrow
trapped by false transparencies
into a suicidal thrashing.

Back and forth he battered himself
against the unforgiving pane
before I cupped him gently
as you would a butterfly
careful not to denude
the delicate wings of powder--
or of a small fish, trying not to scrape
the scales’ protective coat.  

Inside my fingers the bird
was lighter than a mouse,
a thing woven of air
in danger of unweaving
but softly I gathered it
and it calmed as if in death
until my palms opened on the porch
and it stirred and twirled
in a spiral of confusion
before righting itself
with its blessed element.

It’s easy to draw parallels,
how in our skulls we thrash
against unforgiving glass
wishing only for beneficent hands
to scoop us lightly up
and free us from the prison
of accusatory reflections
distorted by self-loathing.

Ah to be free of ourselves
and the suicidal smell of blood,
coppery and cloying--
yes if only some giant hand
would deliver us from ourselves,
how miraculous our flight
into the vital air.

But I know of no such magic
save to write this and imagine
how incomparably pure
the unspoiled air might taste
to a tongue used to spiking
its own mouth in hatred
or how that air might wake
an ear bent on listening
to an encyclopedia of failures
from malice swallowed so young
we never learned the difference
between damned opinions and our gifts,
rather beat against the glass,
the lying, lying glass. 



Tchuss, Ciao, Arrividerchi (sp.?), Sayonara, Vaya con Dios, yada yada,

CE

Update on the Mother of All Depressions

My blog has been moribund, for any still following it.  My depression has been so severe that I have been essentially non-functional.  I can do a few tasks like take out the trash and wash the dishes, but even facing my e-mail seems often an insurmountable burden.

I have a bright intellectual friend, Norman Ball, whose work I recommend, but right now his writing is too exalted for me to parse, for the most part.

My mind is near constantly darkened by the obsession of suicide, the only release my brain seems to comprehend or imagine.  I resist this daily, but it is extremely hard to live when your own brain has become your enemy.  The voices in my head, like howling dogs, constantly sing an odious hymn of self-loathing and self-destruction.  Nature abhors a vacuum thus the locusts have come in to roost.

I don't know how to break this cycle.  Perhaps it most involves acceptance and doing--doing anything, like writing this.  In focusing on a task, however brief or menial, I do get some temporary relief.  But the overwhelming majority of the time has me, as my friend Ralph described, "cowering in my cubicle."

I feel a coward for not being able to face life.  Life doesn't come to me in specific details but as an overwhelming, all-devouring wall of impossibilities.  I quit blogging mainly for fear that I was only going in circles about depression--after all, there is only so much to be said about it, and I thought the narrative might be reinforcing the disease.  Then objectification of my suffering in words may have some therapeutic benefit. 

Don't know when I'll blog again.

All you out there not afflicted with a serious mental illness, give thanks daily.

Namaste,

Craig

Depression Redux; Not a Poem

It's been so long since I blogged.  Readership has fallen off the cliff, as there is no continuing story, though I do get some hits from random net searches about certain subjects discussed here.

So how am I doing?  Close to 10 Kilorats, or on a scale of -10 to +10, I am hovering around -10.  I'm presently alone as my wife is in NY visiting her ailing mother.  I don't know what to do with myself.  I try AA for positive brainwashing and then despair of any miracle.  Sometimes I do treat myself with drink, which helps numb the pain temporarily.  I am psychotically depressed; my fantasies of suicide are sometimes so intrusive I can think of little else.  I have no sense of self as I write this; it's as if my self has abandoned myself.  Does this make any sense?

Luckily my dog is with me.  I would trade places with him in a heartbeat.  Oh to be an American pet!

What will become of what's left of me?  Saw my shrink today, he added another med to the new one I'm taking (Safris).  I have no hope or faith in meds.

Strangely last Saturday I had a brief respite from my state after rapping with two men after an AA meeting.  For two hours we discussed depression, essentially, and I became so involved in the discussion that it lifted me up and I was able to go home and do some things around the house, even wrote a poem and mastered Dylan's "Tangled Up In Blue."  The next morning, however, the transient return to myself slipped away and now I am worse off for having tasted that again, I fear.

I may be complicit in my own destruction for lack of willpower.  Strange, when younger I had a great deal of it, but now I find myself regressed to an infantilized oral state, like a suckling infant, willing to put anything in my mouth for comfort.  I gluttonized yesterday on quesadillas and frozen meals to the point of pain.  Just wanted to put something in my mouth to fill the emptiness, I suppose.

My daughters call out of concern, one nearly daily.  I chat with Kathleen at night by computer (she is deaf, you know).  I haven't written anything here in ages.  I don't know what to do with or about myself.  In writing it appears I might exist.  When I stop typing it's as if I don't.  In a way I may be beyond suicidal; it's as if the soul has died within my body and I walk around like a zombie.  I have been pithed like a frog and no Craigness remains that I can tell.

Strangely I had a poem accepted for publication by Qarrtsiluni which I must have submitted one day while feeling a mite better. 

And did I mention my cervical stenosis acting up?  No longer is it just my pinkies going numb, all my fingers go numb and wake me if I sleep with my neck in the wrong position.  Sometimes it is difficult to type.  This is indeed scary. 

So forgetful I can't remember the books I read.  Even movies I've watched.  Then it comes back to me somewhere in the re-run that something is familiar and I stop--or go on.

Self-pity?  I suppose I have some.  But not too much.  I don't think I'm the only one with such a devastating depression, nor the last one, nor is my suffering completely unique, although it feels so.  Other people in AA try to assure me that they've been through what I'm going through but I don't believe it, in general, at least not for two years like this.  And remember that the days in those years are interminable, so the whole thing seems an infinite nightmare.

I stay alive for my loved ones.  This much I do.  I don't want to cause them pain.  But I can also see a point beyond that, where I don't care anymore.  Sometimes I fear I've reached it.  Then I remind myself I can't do that.  Then the fantasies return with vengeance.  Then I remind myself.  Then they return.  A terrible cycle.  No exit.

Would I rather be dead?  Oh yes.  But a friend said to me, "You can't be sure it would be any better on the other side."  Now that's a terrible thought.  To be as sick as I am now if my existence continued, that's horrible.  I prefer to believe in some kind of redemption, some kind of heaven where I could be miraculously cured, resurrected from the dung heap of my own dark delusions.

I really have nothing to say.  I ought to be institutionalized but that's not easy anymore except for the criminally insane.  Hospitalization didn't help me last time.  As my shrink opines, the only reason for that is to protect me from myself but I have not attempted suicide despite my 13 soul-wrenching major depressions of six months or more.

Everyone has suggestions, suggestions I lack the will to follow.  I need to go to some kind of regimented health farm where I might work in the fields or laundry or have my body regimented in some way until my mind returns.  Sadly I know of no such thing; there are only these 30-day rehab units at great expense, focusing on addiction more than depression.

How I ramble on.  I sincerely hope no one reads this. 

I feel incapable of anything.  Think I'll go have a cigarette I don't enjoy.  And below, an attempt at a poem.

10 Kilorats,


Craig Erick

***************************

This is my last poem before I die.
I set the font for this but it reverts
to one I don’t want.
I prefer Palatino Linotype.
Isn’t that pitiful?

I have a fillet knife.
I know to cut the radial artery
lengthwise for a sure death.
I’m a doctor, after all.
Fuck you.

Once I was a golden boy,
the globe at my feet.
I knew the vibrations of hummingbirds
and the secret enigma of snails.
I knew a lot.

Why five-line stanzas?  Why me?
I go to AA for three days then drink.
Drink makes me better, drink makes me worse.
My daughter pleads with me not to do it.
My wife says she’ll come home early from New York.

I promise my daughter.
I tell my wife to stay and keep her itinerary.
This is confessional poetry at its worst,
no more than journalling.
I have betrayed poetry.  This is not a poem.

You wide-eyed innocents
who have yet to pay Charon for a boat ride--
You are but shades, shades, shades.
The gloom of your conviviality
screams like a rodent in the night.

Poor owl, he’s not to blame.
Nor is the night.  The night is always there
to camouflage our pain.
Did you know aphids are born pregnant?
We are all pregnant with abortions.

Mild improvement?

My mood is mildly improved, it seems, with the addition of Wellbutrin to the soup.  Now my dilemma is what to do with myself.  I have been withdrawing from the world for a year-and-a-half and have lost contact with so many, been unable to write verse and unwilling to play music.  On disability I am not allowed to work at a job, and I am physically limited by my chronic back pain.  For starters I think I shall try to weed the garden a little each day and continue my daily walks.  I feel like an 80-yr-old man inside a 57-yr-old body.  Truly, I ache everywhere, esp. from deconditioning, I think, despite my walking.  Today I am afflicted with severe sciatica and can barely sit to write this.  Oh this mortal coil!  Why must it demand so much of us and why is pain so much part of the bargain.

Kathleen told me about experiments in which the brain re-interprets pain as pleasurable.  Good luck.

CE

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

Composure (flash fiction)

I received in the mail yesterday a challenge for a flash fiction contest, which resulted in the anecdote below.  The requirement was a thousand words or less.  I hope this little diversion brings a chuckle to your brain.

Composure


It was another day at the walk-in clinic in a poor section of Santa Ana where I struggled to communicate with Latino families, and where my Irish Catholic boss was the worst I’d had. He was building a bowling alley in his house while refusing to provide hand soap in the examining rooms, so I used to carry a bar around in my pocket to wash between patients. By concentrating on the needs of patients I was able to put the substandard working conditions out of my mind, though I later became so enraged that I quit.

A black woman in her mid-twenties pushed open the glass door of the entrance and came to the reception desk to register. She was neatly dressed in a yellow polo shirt and sharply creased jeans. Brand new Nikes completed her outfit. Her undyed curls were of moderate length, she wore eye shadow and mascara but no lipstick, foundation or blush. Maybe 5’4”, she was curvaceous without being given over to pulchritude. After a short wait the nurse took her to an examining room and recorded her vitals. In my long white coat with a stethoscope hung about my neck, the equivalent of a priest’s collar, I entered the room. I sat down on the swiveling stool while she sat high on the examining table.

“So what brings you into the clinic today?” I began.

A look of brief disappointment passed over her face, quickly deflating into a grim resolve. Lucent brown eyes fixed me levelly as she said, “I have a discharge.”

“Oh,” I said, in my professionally compassionate voice, not yet tainted by greed or constant overwork. I was too young for that and hoped I always would be. “How long have you had it?”

“About a week.”

“Is it getting better or worse?”

“If it was getting better you think I’d be here?” she said.

“It’s always wise to come in,” I said in mollification, hoping she did not think me too dense. “Can you describe it?”

She glanced at the crotch of her jeans as if this might remind her.

“It’s kind of yellowish and thick.”

“Any odor?”

“Doesn’t it usually smell down there, Doctor?” she said without embarrassment, though a smile pulled at her lips. I wanted to laugh but maintained my professional composure.

“Are you in any pain?” I continued. “Does it burn when you urinate?”

“Not really,” she said.

“Is intercourse painful?”

“I haven’t had any since this started.” She twisted her neck and rubbed it.

“Have you had any new sexual partners recently?” I asked routinely.

She gave me an emphatic “No!”, shaking her head in disgust.

“Well then,” I said, “We’ll have to take a look. The nurse will be in to get you ready OK?”

“OK,” she said, rolling her eyes. I left the room. When I returned she was up on the table with her pale heels in the stirrups, her legs spread wide and a blue paper drape lined with clear plastic covering her legs and groin. I pulled on my gloves, the nurse warmed the speculum and I gently inserted it in the bluish vulva before the pink vaginal folds all races have in common appeared. The discharge was obvious, thick and purulent, typical for gonorrhea. I looked up at the cervical os, and the discharge was ultimately coming from her uterus. I took a culture and swabbed a slide for a gram stain, but the diagnosis was not really in question. There are only so many kinds of vaginal discharge and this one was as old as the oldest profession.

While the speculum was still inserted she asked expectantly, “So what do you think it is?”

In my bluntly lighthearted manner I told her, “It’s not something you get from toilet seats.”

“So I assumed,” she said coldly. She tilted her head back and stared at the acoustic ceiling tiles, her lips pursed in disgust. (Being tall I could see her face above the drape.) “Damn!” she said. “Damn, damn, damn! And I trusted him! And he swore he’d been faithful! Damn his skinny little black ass!”

“I’m sorry,” I said, preparing to remove the speculum, when she blurted, “You know, Doctor, sometimes I wish you would just sew it up! See-oo-ww it up!”

I laughed so hard that the speculum clattered to the floor and the nurse joined in and finally Marie did, too, although her laughter was different, more a sarcastic confirmation than any belly laugh. Embarrassed but only slightly, I picked up the speculum and handed it to the nurse, my hand still shaking from laughter. I thought I might collapse on the floor. It’s the only time I remember laughing during a pelvic.


Thine,

CE