Insidious

There are perhaps billions of people with problems far more vexing and varied than I have, but I do grapple with one that I have faced as far back as my memory carries me: anxiety and depression. My parents, good for them, were complete strangers to this condition and, especially given the times, hadn't a clue why their son was so generally terrified, off kilter, and shy. I wish the reason for this had been genius, some deep hidden gift trying to claw its way through my cerebral cortex into recognition. But, alas, it was wiring. I was pulled from the womb screaming and clutching, and have never been comfortable outside of it. I'll wager I wasn't even comfortable in it--that unsettling swish swish of blood flow and the ominous thump thump thump of my mother's heartbeat, and that menacing rope extending from my navel that kept tangling up my arm so I couldn't provide myself the solace of a sucked thumb. It's wiring, circuitry, and a culture that understood none of this at the time, and is still struggling to come to grips with these strange differences in temperament and personality. Lots of people face these issues, and lots of people have found help through therapy and/or medication. Lot's of people are smart enough to stay on their medication.

Chronic depression is like an insidious virus that doesn't heal, only hides, and occasionally goes dormant. This is a lesson that I have had to learn repeatedly in my life. I was warned long ago, and more than once, by a therapist, that my disorder would almost certainly require treatment throughout my life. That in itself was depressing news. When I told him I wanted a second opinion he said, "Okay, sure . . .  you're also a moron." He had a point. About eight months ago I decided I was fine and put aside the Prozac and shelved the Klonopin. And I was fine, sort of, for several months.

 But here's the insidious side of this disease: when you have this kind of depression and begin to sink, you generally don't know you're sinking until you're drowning, and this can take weeks or months, death by a thousand cuts, the boiling frog, Hansel and Gretel nearing the witches house, the trail of bread crumbs eaten by ravens. When you forget what it feels like to feel okay, and you really do forget, then horrible becomes the new normal. When you find yourself reading the Wikipedia article on Ted Bundy and thinking of all the ways you are like him, you're probably in trouble (unless, or especially, if you really are like him). Aside from the name, and having studied Chinese, I'm not. I know that now. The most significant tell for me was that I quit writing. I quit writing because I came to despise my own voice as a writer. I came to hate my voice because of the other voices that returned in the back of my head continually telling me I was an abhorrent person in nearly every detail, and a fraud. This is the voice of depression. Medication is very effective at putting these voices in their proper place. This is not to say that my voice as a writer is unique or wonderful, but a writer, even a hack, must at least like his own voice, even if the masses, or in my case, my mass of two or three readers, hate it.

But being dependent on medication feels weak. Like most American men of my age I wanted to grow up feeling self-reliant, and as naturally at ease as Jimmy Stewart, as tough as Bogart, as brilliant as the great Professor Irwin Cory--the World's Foremost Authority (who will be celebrating his 100th birthday on July 29)--and, the strength of my father, who captained a submarine chaser at the age of 24. I couldn't even captain my hair at age 24, even though I was married and had a son. Self-possession, ease, confidence, ambition, achievement . . . these are all of the virtues I mimicked while secretly trembling inside and being consumed, bite-by-bite, by anxiety and self-loathing. Because of my spiritual training, I assumed this anxiety and self-loathing were the result of sin, and the answer was redemption and forgiveness. I learned the hard way, over time, that neurological problems do not have spiritual answers. Other things do.

This is only partially about happiness. Happiness is a wonderful thing and to be, as our Declaration reminds us, sought; but it is not our normative state. Life should encompass the full range of emotion at appropriate times and in response to appropriate things. Someone who is always happy (if there is such a creature) is as sick in his or her own way as the chronically depressed, though probably easier to be around, until you want to strangle them.

So, I offer this to those who may read it and who, perhaps like me, have strayed from what they know keeps them sane, if not deliriously happy. Life boils down to a few basic things, really: love life, treat others the way you want to be treated, stay in touch, do good work, be absurdly generous, don't take any wooden nickels, don't look into the mouth of a gift horse . . .  and all this is a lot easier if you take your meds.