On The Perpetual Revisioning Of Depression
I think I’m depressed because all I want to do is sleep but the purely clinical definition of depression is boring so—the way I figure—it’s more likely that I’m possessed by the restless spirit of a Siberian prisoner who died in 1945. All the poor sucker did for years and years was mine uranium until lung cancer killed him good and slow (probably a vindictive and patient Pneuma Demon but doctors call everything they don’t understand “cancer”). If you want to split hairs you could say the guy who possessed me is depressed, depressing me by proxy. But of course he’s depressed! Let’s see you mine yourself to death with uranium. Then tally up your smiles.
The spirits of dead Siberian prisoners inhabit present day souls as a means to find expression for their endless melancholy. Who can blame them?
Or maybe a small yellow cockroach crawled in my ear while I was sleeping—a yellow hermaphrodite cockroach that had an orgy with him and herself in my fucking head. Which then of course led to a swarming colony of baby yellow cockroaches who took up residence in a bunch of synapses between my neurons, feasting on dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine because that is precisely how baby yellow brain cockroaches thrive. (Please do not fail to note here that my ideas are indeed informed by, though not limited to, hard science.)
When my mind tries to tell me that it wishes I was dead, I need only remember the luminous bugs in my head. They possess their own beauty. Depression is a kind of glowing.
Or maybe the person I thought I was, one of them, is dying. And my selves never die quietly—not without a lot of cussing and rage while the rest of us mourn and look away. Or maybe some new me is screaming into being and birth is hard and bloody, the sister of death. Or have you perhaps considered that there’s an invisible vulture perched on my head, feasting on joy? Stranger things have happened. The platypus, McCarthyism, Being.
But let’s banish, please, these three attribution theories: Childhood trauma, a soulless biological approach that excludes the imagination, and the tenacious belief—the literal Christian ghost that haunts us all—that we’re doing something wrong.
I try to remember—it’s hard to remember—that we are not distinct individuals with our own separate problems. The vast interconnection of all phenomena is not a theory. All things constantly rise and fall together like it’s all holding hands. This leads to the conclusion that your feelings are not merely your feelings. If you don’t feel well, it’s probably because—well—nothing’s well. Maybe every single one of us are mouths through which the whole world’s suffering needs to be screamed.
But not always. Dead Siberian prisoners, yellow cockroaches, and invisible vultures never stay forever. If you can sit with them awhile, if you can welcome these strange guests into your home without frantically trying to chase them away, they may surprise you with whispered secrets, unexpected gifts, perhaps a granted wish. And when they finally leave, the sky will be blue again, you will be you again, and your eyes will be the kind that sparkle and see invisible things. You will be otherwise. Everything will be slower and more thoughtful. You will have learned to be gentler with yourself, more patient with the world, and kinder to people whose heads are teeming with swarms of yellow bugs.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Reader Comments (20)
As someone who is going through one of those emo, depressed, what does it all mean things, I find it strangely comforting to read your shit and feel like someone else gets it. Thanks for that.
As weird as it probably (certainly) sounds, you matter. Not just to the people in your life, but to people like me, who you'll probably never meet and whose lives you still touch.
Anddddd I hope that doesn't sound all "creepy stalker in the bushes."
Cockroaches feeding on the chemicals that make you happy, like a worm depriving the body of nutrients...yeah, I recognize that. Not in myself, but in my mom. She just didn't have words. She found it though, the blue sky. Keep going.
I like this idea of abiding....or sitting. Being frantic takes too much energy. I hope the bugs leave soon.
What Star said. For reals.
As long as your yellow brain cockroaches or siberian Uranium miners don't tell you to send pictures of your junk to people, I like the way you think of depression and the way your depression makes you think.
I#m trying to replace wishing I was dead with wishing I was happy. I wish we were all happy.
Oh. I posted last night right after you linked. I guess I should always assume I'll need to comment twice. I said: "Thank you for always knowing what to say"
Perfection, slow and blue.
it's just . . . perfect.
When? When do they go away? When does it get blue again? Because 33 years of this shit is something of a grind, and I don't think it's too much to ask for a bit of a timeline. 33 years. No shit. So long, I can't recall the handful of years before, when the world was bright and hopeful. Can I be done, yet???
Meanwhile, I love you, sugar, for what THAT'S worth. You rattle me in the most delightfully painful ways; I catch myself wishing I knew you as something more than a figment of the Blue Nowhere or my imagination.
Shade and Sweetwater,
K
I read this on my tiny iphone screen on my lunch break and kept hoping each paragraph wouldn't be the last. I'm not sure if I understand the 3rd to last paragraph (or maybe I do but don't want to think my childhood trauma isn't responsible), but I still really really enjoyed this.
Great post.
My depression taught me that I could well get addicted to it.
I had a sense of floating and falling at the same time end it surprised me that there was no bottom to the pit. I found it intriguing and not unpleasant. It lasted a pretty long time.
Then, in the course of the first day of a long before planned vacation, I found it was gone.
I didn't understand, but gladly accepted.
The last paragraph strikes home. Exactly.
Shine on, you crazy, yellow cockroach.
xo
I love your post...but have we forgotten (and when I say WE I mean you) the children you are responsible for.....the ones you owe a childhood/young adulthood to? They did not choose you as a father figure......YOU made that choice somewhere along this line.....do you not think you at some point have to get your shit together long enough for them to have their shit together? Just asking...not judging....just one fucked up parent to another..
If you sit with it and embrace ... you will look upon the world with more empathy and the clarity that you find is often profound. I like to think of the child wishing to protect the flower in The Little Prince ... if we didn't lose that gift of wonder ... how the world would be different. Bravo.
What would having my shit together look like?
Out running, outrunning through the graveyards, your ghost grabs at your feet, but you are already home, gasping at the wonder of a glass of water. You are so many yous -- phoenix leapt from ash: again and again and again and again -- bereft and full, weak and strong -- sitting. Still.
Your feet and your stillnesses all know the time. Thank you.
The thing about coming to an entry late is that all the good comments are already taken. So, I'll just say "ditto". :D
Love you. That's all.