It is hard to write about depression. It is a cloying, unpleasant feeling and it swallows up most things that are interesting or productive or of the kind that people want to read about. All writing is for an audience and the point of living in public is, in part to have a public out there to hold one accountable to one’s own standards. It is much more interesting to write about such meta things.
Lisha, for example, wrote recently about the nature of personal blogging in public and its balance between furthering communication with objects of conflict or difficulty as opposed to being a tool in some sort of arsenal of self-defense. No doubt both of these are interesting aspects of a personal blog and both have been employed here at times, though I would hope I have leaned far more to the furthering of communication. It is important here to note that sometimes that which furthers communication is not always the friendliest of least provocative statement, however. Often people need to read or see jarring or even accusatory things to be alerted to the fact that communication is necessary, that passive or passive-aggressive acceptance of the status quo is insufficient. Time may have mellowed my approach to such things, but has not reduced my faith in that general methodology.
Which makes Lisha’s own insight about “friend of the project” distinctions so important, I think. Because if one has faith that someone else truly has one’s best interests in mind, it’s a lot easier to hear their feedback. Which is why, for example, feedback delivered in a marriage should be a lot easier to hear than that from someone who is of uncertain status, or has just betrayed one, or what have you. Which makes my own ability to take feedback basically impossible at this point, because betrayal in a marriage creates the certain belief that betrayal is possible, probable, or even certain in every personal interaction and connection. Which leads to unending humiliation, depression, and suicidalism.
It’s not fun or easy to write about these feelings, because they just are what they are. They don’t improve or change. I break down crying in the middle of a walk or almost during a volunteer shift or while reading or watching a movie in my lonely cluttered apartment. This just happens. I stare off into space amongst friends or at a meeting and I’m just a hair’s breadth away from losing it. All the time. Talking about it does little, because everyone’s aware of the situation and everyone has either tried and failed to make me feel better or not tried at all. There is no solution. There is no answer someone’s going to come up with, even me. There is only the steady drone of life unending and uninteresting, punctuated by occasional bright spots that seem shallow and hollow in the context of a failed life. And the buildup of still unpacked boxes, undone dishes, undone laundry, unbought furniture, unsorted papers. It is hard enough for me to motivate myself to set about sifting through these mundanities in the best of times – completely unthinkable in the worst.
Yesterday at the Cafe, the main staff who has been reaching out to me asked me what my deal was now that I’d been there for a few weeks and been coming in once each week. She asked me how I was settling down and how things were going in life as well as the volunteering in that context. And suddenly I just poured it all out, laid it on the line, told her everything that’s happened in my life in these three-plus horrific months, told her what I’m facing and dealing with. She proved that my estimations of other people’s ability to help is a little unfair. Just as Russ had some insight about whatever ridiculous-seeming relationship future I might theoretically muster, she had a way of articulating the concept I’ve been trying to explain about moving parts in a brilliant and obvious way. “It’s like you’re a Rubik’s Cube,” she said. And it was so obvious and so true. One that doesn’t seem to have a solution at all. But this explains how burdened I feel. I can’t contact one of the people on my online dating site till I have furniture and I can’t get furniture till I find something cheap and comfortable and haulable and I can’t do that anyway till I clear out the living room of stuff and I can’t do that till I do the laundry and the dishes and I can’t do that till I care about anything and I can’t do that till I have a reason to care, like a possible online date. Oh boy.
As I told her, as I’ve told all of you, some days are okay and some aren’t. But most days seem a tiny bit okay while they sit on the precipice of the abyss. I am always a half-inch away from disaster. And the cumulative effect of being in that state is, itself, a larger disaster. This isn’t necessarily a cry for help, because that would imply a feeling that there was help. Everyone’s helped as much as they can, but there are limits on all of this. There are limits on everything.
Last night before bowling with the debate kids, which was fun and a good distraction for a while, the power went out while I was watching a movie at home. It was terrible enough, but the worst part was that an insidious beeping of two hallway smoke alarms began. They were each on their own pace, so the irregularity of the smoke alarms’ beeping created a piercing and unpredictable cacophony that conspired to ensure maximum annoyance. I sat there, trying to lie down and maybe nap or zone out, while the beeping went off in the background. And it hit me, after about an hour of torturous terrible thoughts and memories, that this was a metaphor for everything I’m going through right now. I am sitting in the dark with nothing to do, no power, no light, and every effort to do something else distracting (I could have possibly read or maybe talked on the phone) is derailed by an incessant and unpredictable beeping in the background, which is of course the feeling of self-loathing, anger, and pain that has arisen from my betrayal. Being able to exist in that state for an hour or two was massive evidence to me that I have a stubborn will that is the only reason I’m still alive. But every minute was torture.
Seemingly obvious solutions at the time might have included going for a walk, though it was rainy and I had absolutely nowhere to go, which also enhances the metaphor I think. And I could have destroyed the smoke alarms, or at least unplugged them, but there’s no way to do that in the metaphor without chemical shortcuts that will probably do more harm than anything else. And even then, probably the beeping is just dulled, not eradicated.
I am going to the Cafe again today, having booked a regular gig for this month before I go home to New Mexico for most of December. I am going to debate practice. I am maintaining my various online projects. I am going to a tournament this weekend, where I get to be in a tab room. All distractions, all good choices, all the union of my stubborn will and my best efforts and the best suggestions of my friends. Unfortunately, it’s all belied by an underlying truth that is omnipresent and devastating…
I am not okay. I am not okay. I am not okay.
