My earliest memory is from when I was four years old, and my family had just moved from an apartment to a house. I remember I stood in the gateway looking down the walkway and up to the house, clutching a doll, or maybe it was a blanket. Memory is often what we make it, isn’t it? It was unfamiliar, and already it did not feel like mine, like it would not offer any space for me. My father, his arms loaded with boxes from the trunk, ran into me and yelled “God damn it, get out of the way.” That is the oldest but certainly not the only memory of being in the way, of being where I was not wanted, until even my just being was a great inconvenience.
For decades since I have experienced the depression shared with many who’s childhoods were shattered by neglect, abuse, or poverty, from having alcoholic and/or mentally unstable parents who were either unwilling or unable to give the mirroring and unconditional acceptance children need. Like others, I have explored it in my art, in therapy, more often than not replicating the same old painful patterns within new relationships. Reflecting back, it seems that while I was in my twenties and thirties the episodes were manageable, that the future offered enough hope and potential to keep moving. In my fifties I find hope has evaporated. Was hope always an illusion formed out of steam?
Depression feels differently to each of us I suppose. I feel depression like a huge, filthy blanket shoved inside my head and my chest, where it blinds my vision and presses down on my intestines. Exhausted, I often am too weak to lift it off. Do you remember that alien aquatic species from James Cameron’s 1989 movie, The Abyss? Picture that black and opaque rather than water-blue and transparent. Remove any sense of benevolence and plant it right in the center of my soul. Between it and the outer surface of my skin are about two or three inches. It is a raging alien that regardless the anti-depressants, the psychoanalysis, and my writing outlet, I am unable to integrate it, unable to exorcise it, unable to walk through it. It is as married to me as my bones.
My inquiry is not how did this happen? Nor how or can I pull it out of me like a dentist pulling a dead tooth? Now that I’ve reached a point where I haven’t seen any sign of hope for months, what I want to know is how do I keep going? How do I create the meaning to move forward? All of the meaning I’ve created before was based upon some sort of magical thinking, that if I persevered “The Universe” (or God/dess) would reward me with a painless relationship, or a satisfying career, or at least the knowledge that I produced something of value out of my life.
Clearly depression creates a psychic hobbling. I can see I was born with potential—having a fair share of intelligence, talent, and beauty—and yet I see too, that I am lacking, what, the self-affirmation? The will? Something from within sabotages every step I take so I know without doubt I will never fulfill my potential.
Those suffering depression will understand that death has become wrapped into my inquiry. What happens after this? If this is all suffering, shouldn’t there be something on the other side? Once I believed in heaven and hell, once I believed in reincarnation and ghosts, and once I believed it was all dirt. I don’t even know what I believe any longer about death. These inquiries are unknowable, one of those unreachable goals to keep me here, still in the way, but chasing knowledge for a few more decades. My hope is that, well of course that I create meaning and find relief; also, that my ruminations prove of value to others.
No comments:
Post a Comment