“Passing Tragically To Destruction”

Depression is a demon who leaves you appalled. – Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, p. 16

—–

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief{\-}
Woe, w{‘o}rld-sorrow; on an {‘a}ge-old {‘a}nvil w{‘i}nce and s{‘i}ng —

Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked “No ling-
Ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief.”

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep. – Gerard Manley Hopkins, “No Worst, There Is None”

Yesterday, Lisa and I were surprised by a package from Amazon.  The label said it was a gift for us.  Inside were two books.  Lisa received The Hoosier Mama Book of Pie.  I received the Solomon book.  I won’t embarrass anyone by revealing who was so generous.  All I will say is that each of us received something precious.  Lisa insists there is a reason “easy as pie” is a saying.  She says making pies, from the crust until it comes out of the oven, is a spiritual exercise.  Now, she has a new crust recipe – it’s all butter, no lard or shortening – and I keep insisting she needs to practice making it, because practice makes perfect.

For myself, reading Solomon’s book has been eye opening in so many ways.  His depiction not only of his own but other’s experiences of depression open windows that let me see myself through the eyes and words of others.  There’s comfort, in a strange way, coming to learn how typical one’s own experiences are, once set side by side with those of others.  That “typical” includes suffering, madness, and occasional horrors that I wouldn’t wish on anyone is, perhaps, neither here nor there.  Reading that others have said and felt and lived so much that has been my life for the past year pushes away the fear a bit.  Not just the fear, though: The sense of isolation that accompanies the inability to communicate how one perceives reality except through metaphor (Solomon notes this more than once; depression, like so many extremes in life, lacks clarity of definition which leaves us with poetry and its tools) lifts a bit in that moment of recognition.  There’s that sense that here is someone who knows what can never be known fully; here is someone who says what I have surrendered being able to say for too long.

Perhaps that is the worst part of living with depression.  It is impossible – really, it is – to communicate with clarity and specificity that through which one lives.  No one, of course, can see inside.  The outward manifestations of depression, at times, resemble everything from mundane sadness and grief, through physical ailments including stomach viruses, to social sins including laziness and (perhaps what is worse) a refusal to participate in the demands for happiness and hope that pervade our society like cancer, refusing to allow the healthy expression of failure and loneliness that too often accompany depression.  We cannot speak too much of our feelings because there’s this sense it is unAmerican to admit what feels and seems so much like personal weakness.  Solomon writes, for example, of the absurdity of depression: that sense that what destroys the self in the depressive can be something others around us accept as a part of life; that there are real problems in the world, from war and its attendant sufferings to poverty and the struggles of ordinary heroes to make it through each day.  These, so often, silence the voices of those who need to cry for help.  After all, who wants to hear the problems of others when one has one’s own problems?

While medical and pharmacological science has progressed much in the years since Solomon’s book was published, it is helpful not only to understand how fortunate are we who seek help now that the medications have improved, but to read again how important yet limited psychopharmacology is.  I know, without a doubt, that I am alive and happier today because of the ongoing use of medications to regulate particular chemical processes in my brain.  I also know that this is not the end-all and be-all of living with depression; talk therapy, for all its limitations, is essential as well.  Like Solomon, I detest having to rely on the daily ingestion of pills to maintain some sense of normalcy.  Unlike Solomon, the thought of not taking them fills me with dread.  Not because of any addiction or broken reliance upon them.  Rather, they are part both of the foundation and wall that holds back the tide of despair that, I know, is now and will always be a part of me.

That is the saddest part of reading Solomon, reading what one fears more than anything: That this creature that has invaded, then pervaded, one’s sense of self, has made itself comfortable.  However I thought of myself before all this, none of those categories apply anymore.  It isn’t just about adjusting to a course of action that has an end and goal – exorcising that devil – but coming to learn that the self, never a stable or simple concept, is completely different now.  Some, perhaps, are able to rid themselves of depression.  For myself, I have come to accept this is not just “a part of my life”.  It is a part of my identity.  It doesn’t “define” me, although no one thing does.  It is, however, a part of who I am, a part of how I understand the world, and myself – past, present, and future – that can be neither escaped nor denied.

Now, I wouldn’t brag that I had read what is, after all, a long, dense book in less than 24 hours.  I have so far to go, still.  All the same, the fraction I have read is such a revelation on so many levels that I refuse to put it down until I finish it.  The person who sent me this gift has done more for me than this person will ever know.

Oh, and if you or someone you know and for whom you care has lived through depression or is living with it, I would urge you to read this remarkable book.  To repeat myself, it says what too often cannot be said, or what one is afraid to say.  It opens a window – or perhaps, at least, pulls back the curtains – in the darkened room of living that is depression.  You do not have to be alone.  If nothing else, you do not have to suffer alone.  There is enough suffering communicated in this book the reader can plop one’s own down next to it, which might well be the first step toward something like healing.