Reversing the Apex

I've spent thirty-five years dealing with major depression. This disease, and yes it is a disease, has taken so much away from me and my family that I cannot begin to explain the toll.

For most people, they see depression as "being depressed", much like they see someone "being sick". Typically they offer words of encouragement and move on; it's polite to say "get well soon" but really, it's not their problem. They fully expect the sick person to get well. No big deal.

Except with the type of depression that I have - Acute Major Depression - you never get well. Friends get tired of you being sick, some get frustrated, others try to help and then get frustrated. Most don't understand.

I want to tell you about a man I don't know, but that I know very well; Robin Williams.

When I heard that Robin had killed himself I was on vacation with my wife and actually having a good time. I wasn't shocked at the news, I wasn't surprised even; just sad. Profoundly sad. Because to me, Robin is a brother that was fighting in a struggle I honestly know all too well, and he lost. It made me sad because I understood that it so easily could have been me.

I'm no doctor. I can only tell you what depression is like for me. So I will.

First off, there's no "event" that I can't get over. My brother, bless him, just wants me to "get over it" but there is no "it". It's not that you're sad because your puppy died. No, it's far more sinister than that.

Some people have triggers. They live life just fine until something triggers a depressive episode, then down, down, down they go. I don't have triggers, or if I do, I don't know what they are. I have anxiety triggers - that's a whole different discussion. No, for me it's a roller coaster. A three to five day cycle. Sometimes, if I notice it early enough, I can catch it and change direction.

But not always.

Those are even worse. This last bout was like this. Knowing you are slipping and not being able to correct it just makes it worse. You hear all these voices in your head and all of them are reminding you constantly of what a failure you are, of how no one likes you, of how useless you are. For the most part, you ignore them and do okay. Except when you're far enough down that rabbit hole and the voice in your head never shuts up, and you just can't seem to drown it out at all. It just gets louder and louder until it's all you hear, it's all you can be.

And during this time you become more withdrawn, you live in your head more, you ignore those around you more.

And your daughter just wants you to play with her.

And your wife just wants you to remember to swap the laundry.

But you can't. You're not living in the present. You're not even on the same planet. You're waging a war that only you can see, only you can hear. And you're losing, whether you know it or not.

I'm lucky, I'm a highly functioning depressive. I can still go to work (though I'm so scatter brained during these times I'm mostly useless, or so I believe), I can get out of bed.

You'd be surprised how many people can't.

Imagine for a moment that you stayed out too late on a Tuesday night and are feeling under the weather, so you call in to your work and say you're not feeling well. Now imagine calling in because you can't find a reason to get out of bed. Because you're "blue". How do you think that would go over?

That voice in your head is an asshole, man. It gets you. Deep down you know it's false, you know it's all a lie. But it's your inner monologue. It's your guide. And it's telling you that the world would be better off without you.

And you believe it.

You feel that everything you do is wrong and you can't do anything right.

And you believe it.

You feel like no one loves you; that you are unworthy of love; that you are some sort of cosmic joke.

And you believe it.

I rock my daughter to sleep and cry and tell her that I'm so sorry that I'm her daddy and that she deserves so much better.

And I believe it.

These thoughts and feelings, irrational as they are, become reality. Your body and your mind trick you into accepting these things as fact. Whatever chemical that your brain should be releasing so that you can evaluate your self properly and say "yeah I screwed that up, but you know, next time I'll do it better" simply isn't there.

I cannot begin to guess at the number of times I've cried myself to sleep, begging God to just not let me wake up. How many days I've walked around in a daze, not really here but not really there.

After a while, your body starts to try and protect itself. You become numb to everything. I used to walk around in the Seattle fall without a jacket in the pouring rain and I couldn't feel it. I knew it was cold but I just didn't care. After a while you stop caring about anything. If someone pointed put a gun in your face you'd actually be relieved in sick way.

My emotions are a wreck. I don't understand them anyway because I don't really have any good experience with them. I believe that most people, normal people, feel "okay" in general, with good days and bad, but a kind of baseline "happy" or maybe "content" as their default cruise speed.

On my best days, I don't feel happy; at best I feel just a little more than "neutral". What I mean is, the world could end, and I wouldn't really care. My phone could ring telling me someone died and I don't know if I would feel anything real at all. Sure I'd say everything you'd expect to hear, but internally I'd just be ready for the conversation to end. Yeah, shitty huh?

So you go emotionally numb - your body protects itself. I stayed here for a long time and I don't think I'm fully out of it yet. It's getting a little better, but these things are slow to change.

You see yourself separate from everyone else. Like there is you and you're floating out in space looking down at the Earth. And you're not part of this wonderful and beautiful thing they are. You can never experience life the way that they do. You are alone, and no one will ever truly understand that.

And that makes me feel profoundly sad and alone. I could tell this to a number of people; my wife, my friends, and they'd all say the same thing: I'm not alone. And the rational part of me knows they are right.

But I don't believe it.

The darkness that envelops me won't allow it. How can I be "not alone" when I can't even understand what love is? What friendship truly is? What it's supposed to feel like? How can I be not alone when all I truly want is to be forgotten and left alone? I push people away; I don't know how to respond when someone says something meaningful to me. Hell, for the longest time I was so desperate for affection and attention that I would smother every relationship I had until everyone had to finally just get away from me. Then I would say to myself "see, I told you so".

It's a terrible cycle.

I've spent my life so far being the one that has to make people laugh because this is how I reassure myself that no one's mad at me and that people like me. I believe, because I'm made to believe it, that if I'm not making a joke and people are having a good time around me, then they don't like me. Or I've done something wrong. Or both.

It fraking sucks because most of the time I think people just want me to shut the hell up.

I fear, that I'm actually pretty bland. I don't really have that much to offer anyway, and it's only through some miracle that I have a wife and friends at all. Or maybe you are all just cursed.

So I go down this spiral and it gets worse and worse to the point that I can't even listen to the music I like anymore unless it's Stained or Jerry Cantrell because why the frak not? I can't do things. I can't play a game or play my guitar or write or read or sleep or be awake... you see where this is going? It gets so bad sometimes I swear that my skin is going to crack and I'm going explode. It seriously feels this way. Typically, when it gets really bad, I just lie down and listen to soothing classical music.

Music is the only thing I can get lost in honestly. I can feel emotions through instruments. This is why I like soundtracks or instrumentals.

And I work with these amazing people who think I am some sort of genius... and I keep waiting for them to realize I'm a complete hack; it's like they're blind or something. But I try very hard not to let them down. Deep inside I want to be part of something, to build something, and I cling to that desperately and to a fault. I will do work on a Saturday instead of going to the zoo with my daughter, even if it's something that can wait. I just want to be worth the effort you know? I want to prove it to myself even though I don't have to. No one expects me to. Everyone would rather I went to the zoo, if you asked them. But I'm afraid. I'm terrified of being a failure because I fail all the time. And I'm so tired of it. 

And the next stage is the anger. Jesus Christ the anger. It's like pure rage. You just see red constantly. I can be sitting at a light and suddenly just dying to break something, or hit something. I fantasize about just beating the living shit out of someone. I imagine made up conversations in my head and find myself gritting my teeth in anger.

Literally trying to pull your
 own hair out - it's a thing.

I snap at everyone around me. I hate who I become. I hate that most of all. During that time the dark voice in my head and the rational voice that's buried so deep by the disease both agree on one thing: I am a horrible human being. I am a monster. I hurt everyone around me. I jab and poke and am downright mean and dirty. My wife doesn't like to be around me and I don't blame her. I'm short with my daughter; the only thing that anchors me to this world at all. I'm short with everyone and everything. I am horrible. And that leads to the guilt.

You feel guilty for being an asshole. For saying something mean even though you didn't mean it and you it wasn't really you talking, but it was and now you can't take it back. You feel guilty for every fraking thing you've ever done wrong.

I'm so sorry.

And at least for me, it's really thorough. Hey, remember that time you didn't help that guy out even though he was totally scamming you? Yeah, you're a pile of shit.

So then you feel more depressed for a little while longer and if you're lucky, really lucky, you start to pull out. You start to break the surface and you can finally breathe a little. And you climb and claw and fight your way onto shore until you are standing upright again.

Or you drown. There's always that.

Then you try to fix whatever you broke while you were under. You're finally somewhat rational again - so you make amends where you can. Sometimes no one really noticed. Other times there's a whole slew of people who don't understand that you love them and would never purposely hurt them. And sometimes there are holes in walls to patch.

But you turn inward regardless. I am a narcissist by default because I have to be. I am constantly fighting an internal war with myself. I am constantly second guessing every step, every decision. I spend days in my head saying things over and over like "don't be that way" or "that's stupid let that one go" or "you really don't do anything for your wife, you should work on that". Trying, pleading with myself to not be so angry.

I am probably one of the most selfish people you will ever meet and I don't even know what that means. I don't know any different. I'm trying. I'm trying really hard.

This is my battle. Like I said, it's different for everyone. But to a man, one part is the same: you hate these feelings and you become so desperate for it to stop that you truly believe that killing yourself is the right choice.

You believe that the better option is to no longer be a part of the world. You are blind to what that would do to others. You believe that they would be better off without you. That the whole world would be better off if you were gone.

This is how Robin Williams died. He did not "choose" in the sense that a rational person chooses to have a turkey sandwich over a ham sandwich. And people cannot understand it because it's not a rational thought process.

You cannot rationalize something that is irrational.

Like me, Robin had a disease. And he lost his fight to it. And that makes me sad; a honest kind of sad, because it really could have been me so many times over.

So when you hear someone say that people who commit suicide - that Robin was selfish you are right. We seek to end our pain, but spend to long with no reprieve and the extreme becomes more and more attractive. But please also remember: no one had ever just "thrown it all away". It's a disease. People with major depression who commit suicide die by their own hand, yes, but they die as a result from a disease just a surely as anyone who's ever lost a fight to a disease.

I believe that most people can't comprehend what it's like. Most people are good, rational people and this is a very irrational thing. I don't fault anyone for not "getting it". Indeed I wrote this as a response to people who have said Robin had a wonderful life and he threw it away. And sometimes it helps to get these things on paper.

The anger, for example, is fairly new for me, and it scares the hell out of me. Sometimes I fear that it's all I can feel. Most people think of me as an atheist or at least some kind of sinner. I hope God exists. I hope to find out that it's all real. Because then there's a chance of being able to understand why.

But  I will carry on and take my pills (Lexapro 20 mg and Buspar 15 mg for those of you keeping score at home) and though I will likely fail, I will try.

Because my little girl depends on me.

And I made a promise to friend once.

And because, that's just what I do, for better or worse.

ML

only advantage this life's got on me, picture a cup in the middle of the sea