Dusting Off An Old Story Of Depression

My life is a vessel of pure joy and true peace that no words can do justice.  Each day is precious and meaningful, a true miracle and blessing.  Yet it was not always so.  One year of my life was lost forever.  A mere 25 years ago, I was held hostage by a depression so deep, so dark and unyielding, that I would daily meditate on the various ways to end my pain by ending my life.  I took to writing then editing "last letters" to each individual family member as they were all so different and affected my life in such selective ways.  

No one had an inkling of what I was trying to endure.  I surrendered my hours to the beast known as inaction and could scarce get from one day into the next.  With no motivation to do anything, everyday common obligations began to slip away.  It began when I quit my job, gave my car to my brother, and moved back to my parents' house into a small room used for storeage.  I think I was trying to bury myself.  Keeping my presence quiet and rare, I wanted only to be left alone to nurse my psychic wounds without having to interact with a living soul.  Everyone was busy living their lives while I was swimming in the deep end of that luxurious ocean called self-pity.  The ultimate luxury.  We hold our hurts close and guard them against all who try to loosen us from the perverse pleasure of feeling nothing.  I watched from my window as each day would open and close, without ever going out to breathe it, feel it, live it.  Everything was painful.   

Time held no meaning for me.  I would follow my insomnia with days of unnatural sleep with unremembered dreams, and nights of fully alert anguish.  I wrote prose, wrote music, wrote suicide letters, but did little else.  By the time I finally got help, a full year had passed into nothingness, completed wasted.  The Doctor called it clinical depression and prescribed a suitable Rx.  It has never returned in such full force, yet I sense that lurking darkness everytime a remembered slight causes psychic hurt that enjoins self-pity.  Thereby comes depression.    

How many easy blue mornings did I assign to an unnatural sleep?  Why ever did a day seem a chore to live out?  Would that the Almighty forgive just one day of wasted time, just one day I left untainted by action, even by thought ...

I was too busy minding the torment of my soul.  Like some novice rider trying to control a thoroughbred, I looked after my moods and sorrows with a tense, fearful eye.  If I pulled the reins too tight, the pain would beg a bloody outlet, like razor blades and shapr knives.  Should I ease up on these phantoms, my heart would lose its keen awareness of itself, and I might never know the perverse joy of discovering a new hurt.  I was a mess, and I knew it.  

Not a living soul surrounding me gave thought to my troubling meditations, for they knew only that I seemed to float through each day, there but not really there; seeing but not noticing; hearing but not understanding the language.  I spoke to my heart, and through real blood and pain I was finding a strange surcease in the music of these raptures.  I had so much more than I needed, and far too much time to misuse everything I was given.  Feeling was becoming lost to me, I could no longer grasp the concept of joy, of love.  Numb with pain.      

Can one re-love once they've enjoined hate to their passions?  For I recall how I truly hated the whole world for allowing a human being to come to such a place where they no longer wished to live.  Later, I discovered it was of course myself I was truly hating, and it took time and patience to relearn how to see myself as a worthy soul, a deserving person, someone who can be cared about.  Resentments, jealousies, confrontations, and the effrontery of knowing you've not been noticed all conspired to deepen each facet of my depression. 

Would that some sweet unlikely love come into my life then, cleaving itself to my heart, it could've held sway against the passion of such self-pity as would startle the likes of Nero, the patron of self-pity. Yes, perhaps love could've saved that year of waste, saved my soul from such exquisite pain.  But back then, I was fully intent on dying.  By sheer will if necessary.

No one could outstay my ability to render rough in my thoughts all the myriad ways to die with meaning.  I would show the world, yes show them all or so I believed, hence I despised my cowardice at not being able to find death at my own hand.  Every concept alluded me in their lack of drama.  Yet somewhere inside I felt a laughing indifference as if my spirit knew it was not to be extinguished, not yet and not by me.  

I look back on this now, having lived a very full, meaningful, God-blessed and happy caring life, and the depth of self-loathing I must've once felt shocks me into incredulity.  If I hadn't kept a diary of sorts and wrote my prose, alot of the immediacy of feeling would've been lost.  Yet I'm grateful I put all that pain to paper so that every now and again I can look into the heart of that time and realize what a unique gift each moment truly is.  I spent so much energy keeping the world at bay, for true misery tolerates no company, I believe.  

Once I was able to extinguish the dark using the light of life, I changed my profession of Paralegal, went to school for training and became a certified lab technician, helping people find answers to either the sickness of a loved one, or tracking the etymology of an unnatural death.  I was fascinated by the forensic pathology of human behaviors so in my off hours, I immersed my mind in education every way imaginable.  Sometimes just making slides all day could be boring, but it was life, and I was alive, so I had a respondibility to live it, however it most pleased me - which was to please others if I could.  

Clinical depression is a monster, can last several years I'm told, causes other physical ailments, and most of all robs a person of their motivation to live, to be at peace, to find joy in everyday things.  Once it was over my Doctor refered to it as a temporary chemical imbalance and was convinced it would never return.  It never has in that same fierce way, yet when I listen to people who suffer from such a devastating horror I can empathize with that pain, that emptiness and loss, and I've discovered that simply by listening one is able to ease their darkness a bit.  When I became physically disabled a bit, still trying to escape the wheelchair, I was told, "Well at least you still have your legs - others do not."  This was supposed to make me feel better?  I never felt more blessed knowing others were far worse!  What an odd thing to say.    

I can only add that, the next time you feel sad about something, imagine not being able to feel anything at all.