I have a history of depression, and every so often have a day or a couple of days in which I'm completely non-functional. I had a couple of those recently.
I love the Cymbalta "depression hurts" commercial, as much as you can love a pharmaceutical ad, anyway, because it so perfectly captures the experience of depression -- living your life from a dark place, in a dark room, oblivious to those around you while everyone else lives their lives. It perfectly illustrates the sense of being completely hopeless and unable to engage, wandering aimlessly through the frozen foods section, completely overwhelmed by the effort of choosing between two types of Swanson dinners and not caring if you ever eat again. The commercial hits so close to home, in fact, that I find it hard not to cry every time it comes on.
Eventually the darkness lifts and I return to my own special version of normal, forgetting for a time what it was like to spiral down until the Black Dog, as someone famous (Winston Churchill?) once called it, comes around again. Just when I feel that I'm making real progress in my life it happens again, and I can't remember or imagine ever feeling well. Apparently I talk a great game, because I'm constantly told how incredibly "perky" and "happy" I am, a great source of confusion when you feel awful but question your judgement because everyone assures you you're a bleeding beacon of sunshine. I decided that it might help to keep a written record of my "episodes," both to validate my experience in my own mind and perhaps offer patterns and clues that might help the next time around. I thought that I would post one of these accounts, my own little Cymbalta commercial, to try to capture the nature of depression. I have also realized how much I have kept this part of myself
to myself, lived alone with it, and thought that releasing it into the blog-world might help dilute its power.
I tried Cymbalta, incidentally, until my samples ran out and it wasn't among the antidepressants my insurance would approve; since moving to the US a year ago, I've switched medications four times trying to find one that is covered by insurance and lifts my mood without destroying my guts, libido and figure.
Sept 5th
Even when I am depressed, or maybe especially when I am depressed, I can eat my weight in breakfast. I had the Spacetown Breakfast at the Derry Diner, and the waitress applauded me for finishing everything, right down to the enormous waffle that she said is most people’s undoing. I grinned shyly, acknowledging her praise, and felt actual pride. I am 30 going on 6.
Between being unable to find any decent clothes due to the move and the apathy with which I awoke, I am dressed like a tragic soccer mom. My hair is scraggled back in an elastic. These are the most attractive years of my life, and this is all I have to offer.
This morning I woke up afraid. My dehydration headache was a reminder of last night’s cryfest. I told Eric that he shouldn’t have to babysit me, but he worked from home to keep me company because I was afraid to be alone and sad. Usually, I am just afraid to be alone in a house with crappy locks. Today, I didn’t really care if anyone broke in.
I don’t think Eric got much work done. We went to Home Depot for screws, and I picked out some tulip bulbs that caught my eye, while simultaneously telling myself that I would never be organized enough to get them planted.
At suppertime I almost cried when I couldn’t find cayenne pepper and a baking pan for hot wings. I ended up using a turkey roaster placed in an oven full of ashes I didn’t have the strength of body or mind to remove following the self-cleaning we had done earlier in the day. The oven wouldn’t work. We had takeout. I ordered some cabinet knobs online that made me happy until the happiness was drowned by the knowledge that I’d never get the house together and didn’t deserve nice things anyway.
Today I took my first walk around the neighborhood (it started as a run, but quickly degraded). I tried to focus on foliage and houses but mostly thought about all the things in life I can’t keep up with. I showered and shaved my legs and armpits with a razor too dull to cut butter.
I am sad because I am invisible.
I am convinced that life is a constant series of disappointments.
I am sad because I feel like the friends I had have forgotten me.
I am sad because I am scared of everything.
I am sad because the entryway smells like pee.
I am sad because I cannot seem to get past sad.
I am sad because everything is an obstacle, and I cannot see it any other way.
I am sad because I once thought I would run with the poets. Now, I run with the bottle of all-purpose cleaner and still manage to live in a dump of my own creation.
I cannot call myself a writer, because writers write, and I do not. I clean and stew.
I am bitter because people with full-time jobs manage to keep shiny, clean-scrubbed houses, and I clean obsessively with nothing to show for it.
I feel guilty because I have no 9-5 job to go to, yet still can’t find time to do anything and completely throw away the opportunity I’m given.
I am angry that there is not enough time for anything, let alone slowing down and enjoying it.
I am convinced that others see me as nothing more than a housewife sponging off of Eric, and fear that this is true.
I walk with the constant pain of so much wasted potential, and the conviction that life and time have passed me by.
I am crushed by the knowledge that nothing ever changes.
I am drowning in the past, and see nothing of pleasure or success in the future.
I am isolated, with no one reaching in and no me reaching out, falling in on myself. I know that I need to spend more time out in the world, but every fiber fears and resists.
I am angry that I try so hard and have been doing it all wrong, all along. I have learned nothing.
I want but fear children, both for the demands they will impose on my already beyond-control life and the things I will impose on them.
I am sad that I cannot get in a car and drive without being paralyzed by the conviction of an intrinsic lack of skill and fear of hurting someone else or myself.
I am sad because my way always seems to be the wrong way.
I am angry for staying quiet while others put me down, then turning around and giving myself the same treatment.
I did not like Sylvia Plath's journals, particularly her description of the pleasures of picking her nose, but one thing stayed with me -- her description of how she couldn't find the strength or motivation to wash her hair, paralyzed by the prospect of having to do it again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, wondering what's the point of ever doing it at all.
depression
