What a downer
So I find myself at a tail end of a depression for things I’ve already posted about and a dozen other reasons. It’s passing, I’m healing, I don’t suffer from Depression. It still really sucks right now and I’d rather not but there’s no way for it but through it.
I’m hoping this is a purge of residue emotion that will carry me through until at least January 5th, 2004. Because there’s nothing like the turmoil of the Holiday Season as it is. People are just all set to express intense emotion: Joy, Grief, Anger, Resentment, and so on. Nevermind the stress, nor the high expectations people set for this time of year.
And, yeah, Depression. I always worry about the effects of this on people around this time of year. Thankfully, those friends of mine who I know are clinically depressed tend to express it clearly, which, while I’m not pleased by what they are going through, I am relieved and comforted. Those suicides I’ve had any contact with tend to be talking about anything but sadness, usually cheerfully outlining how great their life is and all their plans, but omit mentioning that trip to the ammo store.*
And depression is a weird topic in our society. It’s ugly and people don’t want to be troubled or confronted with it. Which, like with so many other topics, sex and drugs among them, vacillate wildly between not being discussed or over compensated for. And measured by unrealistic societal guidelines.
Example. Kip and I spent last Christmas totally on our own, we planned it that way, gleefully. And just about everybody responded about what a shame, such a pity and did your plans fall through? You know, it’s those kind of reactions and expectations that can spend people into turmoil, doubt and depression. Not that it had that effect, by the way, we had grand old time: pajamas on the couch with many blankets, pillows, pressies, treats and movies.
Also, some people have a weird idea of what depression looks like. Right now, I’m depressed, it doesn’t mean I’m always in tears or that I won’t crack wise or have a joyous moment—mostly it means that my neutral state is, well, depressed. (Normally I think it’s bemused) Thankfully it’s not a position I’m locked in, unlike some of my friends and family.
I’m always amazed how physical emotions are. About whatever series of chemicals and motor reactions kick in as signals. Which everybody feels. So I’m also amazed when people who would think nothing of taking an asprin condemn or cannot comprehend why some people need medication to help adjust their personal mix when the trigger for sad won’t turn off. I mean, painkillers are there to supplement or make up for the slowness of our own natural opiates, I personally don’t take them at every ache. Not that I’ve not known cases of magic pill prescribing, that is, no one wants to really deal with the problem, or misdiagnosis, but that’s true for most every medical problem.
There’s this almost violent rejection of sadness that I see. It’s seen as a weakness, worse than anger which has the advantage at times of being righteous. More than once I’ve had people complain about the uselessness of being sad, that it serves no purpose. I disagree. Without sadness, there would be no compassion, and if you think things are bad now…
*Three of the successful suicides I’ve known used guns.
Electronic hug to you, lady.
What to say. Well put. Doing relatively fine myself, SAD light box still a blessing, life’s much more gooder since that. And I’ve got no guns, nor desire.
I”ll take that hug and raise you one!
I am so pleased you have found something that works–and continues to work–for you, to help give you balance.
The trial and error that many people have to go through, to act as your own ginea pig has just got to blow.
And I’m glad your keel is even and that you share, both the good and the bad.
People aren’t MEANT to be happy all the time. If somebody is, they’re in a mental health textbook, and not in the good pages.
Black and blue periods should be respected. I know that I’m a mercurial little goose, and I also know that my occasional bleak spans do more to clean out my system and make me face problems than anything else. Sometimes I just really need to doubt myself or stay in my room or cry over the news.
Pain has positive survival origins: it tells you when to let up and pay attention to physical injury. It’s the same for sadness.
And I agree that clinical depression is like chronic pain. If you can return pain and sadness to being your ally, it’s worth it.
People aren’t MEANT to be happy all the time.
Absolutely. I worry about people who think otherwise.
And there’s the whole “no day without night” logic. Me, I’m willing to pay for those bursts of joy with feeling down now and again.
It’s actually taken me a bit to allow myself to ride my sadness, to indulge it as it needs. Years of Protestant “suck it up and move on, there’s work to be done” or “what cause do YOU have to be sad?” Just a small facet of Protestant guilt going there.
Yeah, having a little Catholic heritage is really good for just jiving with a blue mood.
For me, it’s a Cartesian dialectic thing: the ghost in the bone machine hates to admit its very existence depends on that machine. If simple drugs can change your basic outlook, your baseline emotional state, your self, well, the ghost gets spooked and sticks its ectoplasmic fingers in its ears and starts yelling neener neener neener I can’t hear you!
(Of course drugs can do all that. Dude, I’ve done enough acid to know. I never said this was rational. But.)
agreed. It’s the concept that somehow something being fixable by physical means invalidates the emotional reality of what you’ve gone through. And that’s spooky.
But then I think you have to remind yourself that SO much of our mood, if not ALL, depends on the physical world, internal AND external. It doesn’t make your emotions not real: they’re a response to a bad thing happening in the real world. The real world just happens to include your body.
If you lost the ability to use your drawing hand, wouldn’t you be immensely emotionally disturbed?
…Why no, I’m not a materialist, why do you ask?
It’s also hell to try and get Kip to take pain killer even when he’s had a throbbing headache for over two hours.
And I find how the mind, spirit and body are fused to be fascinating. Like the response to a scent that smells like your Grandmother’s house in summer.
…or delicate madeleine cookies steeped in tea?
Sorry, liberal arts student, have to drag in Proust wherever I can.
All in moderation, drugs and depression. That’s my motto.
And yes, over the years I’ve found depression to be a catalyst, a purging, an inner-looking, and interesting delving into the human spirit. And I still do. But when it’s there all the time for years and years, it just sucks. When people tell me that “without depression, happiness would be meaningless” I want to hurt them. I mean, sure, true enough. If you didn’t lose sometimes, then winning would become meaningless. But if you lose all the time, takes the fun out of running at all. It’s simply a diferent situation. Everything, for good and bad, is unique.
That said, yes, light-box ended up being the stupid little detail which made me find out I had been sleeping for ten years. And so it’s more in moderation these days for me, and so yes, for me now the bad can help appreciate the good. But I won’t forget.
Blah blah soapbox blah blah blah
Oh, and I love how scents react with memory. Sometimes a fresh moring dew reminds me of tacos.
What you said about people who think nothing of an aspirin fretting about scrips for depression: I get this a lot because both of my kids are on meds for ADHD, and my son for autism, me for depression and OC.
Nobody’d bat an eye if I said we were on meds for heart conditions, or kidney/liver problems, but ADHD and away they go.
Someone asked if I’d tried St. John’s Wort. In fact, I had. It helped, a very little, but it was still bailing out the dinghy in a typhoon. My son can learn and speak. My daughter can get through the day. The meds, for me, are truly the difference between living and giving up.
And, see, if you think of us as all having heart problems and taking meds and being able to live “normally”, it sounds really miraculous. Wheee!
Lea, your comment coupled with billboards I saw today brought to mind the scariness of prescription drug presence in advertising. Or, the further degradation of true health care in favor for the “slap a bandaid on it call it good” approach.
I forget at the moment which mood altering drug was bieng hawked a couple of years ago on TV, but the gist of the message was “Depressed? Ask your doctor about Magic Pill X.” And this upset me more than the other Prescription Drug commercials going at the time. Because no one wants to talk about the disturbing details.
And I have known people who got anti-depressants their first consultation. Imagine, indeed, a course of treatment for liver or heart disease being treated so lightly, without tests and follow-up visits. Good lord.
Am I wrong in remembering that the main prescription drug commercials were for, besides depression, sinus allergies, diet pills and acid reflux?
Now you have reminded me that I need to get my prescription for Celexa refilled.
Great post, and great comments. I come to this ten days late (been a bit bizzy, what with expecting a child and all), so it’s all in full swing. What I can add is that depression made it difficult, sometimes impossible, to get any cartooning done. It also made me grumpy, snappy and morose. My assessment of the future was bleak. My appraisal of the culture was dismissive. And my view of the world become misanthropic. I couldn’t look at something beautiful without finding something ugly in it.
Now on “the happy pill”, my perspective has improved. Yet one thing I think those anti-depressant adverts should point out is that just because your personal disposition has gotten better, the rest of the world remains a frightening, messy, dangerous and grossly stupid place. If the ads were honest, they would simply promise that your ability to cope with this crap would not be handicapped by chemical imbalances of your own brain, thanks to Our Nifty Product. The economy will still suck, the war is still there, people can still be herded like sheep yet flee like rats, and so on. But you’ll have a shit-umbrella.
I went into the doctor’s office with no illusions, however. I just wanted to resume cartooning and stop being such a poopy around the houseÑand, by golly, actually enjoy the time leading up to my kid’s birth. So far, it has worked. Outside stress persists, of course: job still sucks, family can get really complicated and, as you note, the holiday season can be such a piss-on-parade. But I can at least cope.
I went into the doctor’s office with no illusions, however.
And you were already under treatment and had a good history with the doctor in question, so I worried not. Except for the obvious reasons.
And yes, my other big complaint is the fact that it’s not usually a matter of life sucking or not–because it will–it’s a matter of being able to cope.