andrewlittle
12-20-2008, 11:07 AM
Hello, my friends. I have long been absent, although I have come and snooped around once in a while and even on rare occasion dropped my two-cents worth when I've had the capacity to do so.
What I am going to say here is not designed to get a reaction - especially anything like sympathy - nor is it anything that will likely get comments. It is, I guess, an effort to explain where I have been, and what I am striving to climb out of. Maybe it's just truth-telling for it's own sake. I have been fighting one of my ten-year depressive cycles, and it's been a bitch this time. It has overwhelmed everything except the ability to minimally function - to do just what I needed to do to exist.
The first part I wrote at the lowest point, which was not so long ago. I wrote it for myself - to be able to remember what the monster feels like. The second part is a rewriting of something I wrote after my last big fight with depression ten years ago. It is helping to remind me why episodes like this are so important for my survival. Here goes:
I love you. I so want you to understand where I am but know you cannot. I want you to know what can’t even be known unless it’s known first hand. I want you to hold me and want me, but I don’t want to be me anymore – and, so, I am afraid of wanting to be wanted. I am so ashamed of being afraid of being shamed, that I shame myself. I am a self-fulfilling prophecy – a cosmic practical joke played on me by myself. I want you to know where I am, but I am terrified of you hating me if you knew. This is the best I can do at making the irrational understandable – explaining my tenuous hold on sanity written in moments of lucidity. I don’t know if it will make sense – actually, I’m pretty sure it won’t.
I don’t want to die, but I wonder what it feels likes to want to live. I know I should know, after all I am sure I have felt that way before. But I forget. Maybe it’s just been too long. Maybe crying out to God to take me overwhelmed that tiny little spark of life. Maybe I just blew it out. Why, God? Why can’t I just fade away – disappear in some totally unobtrusive way? I don’t want to hurt anyone, not even myself, but I do – over and over again I cause pain. I don’t want to feel pain either, but the deafening dull pain in my chest is my constant companion. I just want to be numb – anesthetized – comatose. I’m not picky, just so damn tired.
Sometimes it comes quickly; other times it takes forever. Come it does, though, eventually. It steals into my heart making it ache incessantly, reminding me of how I have felt so many times for so damn long. It comes relentlessly, sucking the life out of my limbs, absconding with my initiative, killing my creativity, smothering my identity – all the while making my mind a constant, confused, raucous noise of despair. I am useless. I know better when I can think it through, but I am useless anyway. Useless to stop it; useless to fend it off; useless against the shame that rears on its hind legs and kicks me when I’m down; useless at being me.
The bottomless pit only varies in its darkness, not its depth. Otherwise, it would be an oxymoron. Sometimes it’s just a hanging, foreboding, and nebulous grey like an Ohio winter. Sometimes, like now, its pitch black and thick like treacle – a faceless, formless, suffocating mass that I can neither touch nor escape. It envelopes my mind leaving holes where once thoughts ran free. I know I still think, it’s just that there’s no memory of it, no outcome and no point to it. Minutes, hours, days – they just ooze by as a blubbery, gelatinous sludge – agonizingly slow and yet astonishingly fast. Time becomes immeasurable, the seconds ticking off in some somber death march and the hours getting gobbled up like they have no substance. Forever lasts but a moment and an instant is like eternity.
So, I stare. I stare at screens of information flowing by as I search for something – anything on which to be able to focus and keep out the noise. Of course, it just adds to the clamor. I stare at my own life dribbling along like a week of rain, wishing for something extreme to get my attention – but not really. I could care less whether it’s a heat wave or a thunder storm, just something other than no thing – even though I cling to the comforting discomfort of nothing. The nothingness is all that persists. I am an expert on nothingness. I know everything there is to know about it. It’s insidious and pervasive like a stalking cat, overwhelming all things in its path. It’s what I see when I stare at myself from the vantage of my place in the pit – an amorphous blob indistinct from the turbid bile that is trying to digest me. Nothing eats no thing, yet here I am.
The ache in my solar plexus spreads throughout; fingers of throbbing malaise ripping out the pages of my life day by day – the life I should be living but which evaporates as I watch from a distance. I want to engage, but I quake at the thought of having nothing to give. I want to be held, but am afraid of it. I want to withdraw, but can’t face the loneliness. I want to approach love, even while I walk backwards away from feeling anything. My head, stomach and heart are indistinct in their endless misery, and hate each other with no passion whatsoever. I want to tell you how much I need you, but I wince at every invisible word that cannot leave my mouth. I want to be loved by you, but I am terrified that there is nothing left to love. My biggest fear is being nothing, and I feel as if I am almost there.
RECOVERY
Children survive.
They seem to be built to survive almost anything.
The pain of loneliness, war, crime, rejection,
being ignored, being abused, being smothered, being used,
predation, exposure, abandonment, over-protection, –
these are just some of the things kids endure.
But to do so requires they develop tools –
most of them facades – fake faces.
It is these false countenances and big walls
that, as adults, keep distance between us.
They protect the “us” we can’t risk showing the world,
the one we forget exists as time moves on.
We show the safe “us”, the one that can’t get hurt,
because it’s not real.
But hurt we do.
The black void gets bigger and we become emptier.
Then, eventually, it dawns on us –
being an adult isn’t about being safe –
it’s about being real.
It’s about risk.
It’s about re-finding GOD.
Yes, eventually we realize –
if we can’t be honest with each other –
how can we trust anyone including GOD.
So eventually we learn to set aside our facades;
to expose our soft underbellies and face our pain and doubts;
to recognize our vulnerabilities and strive to overcome them;
to look longingly for GOD and yearn for hope.
We find GOD has been there the whole time – waiting for us.
We allow GOD to fill the void with joy.
Welcome back to being a child – now we’re ready for GOD.
Now we can survive anything because
Children survive
What I am going to say here is not designed to get a reaction - especially anything like sympathy - nor is it anything that will likely get comments. It is, I guess, an effort to explain where I have been, and what I am striving to climb out of. Maybe it's just truth-telling for it's own sake. I have been fighting one of my ten-year depressive cycles, and it's been a bitch this time. It has overwhelmed everything except the ability to minimally function - to do just what I needed to do to exist.
The first part I wrote at the lowest point, which was not so long ago. I wrote it for myself - to be able to remember what the monster feels like. The second part is a rewriting of something I wrote after my last big fight with depression ten years ago. It is helping to remind me why episodes like this are so important for my survival. Here goes:
I love you. I so want you to understand where I am but know you cannot. I want you to know what can’t even be known unless it’s known first hand. I want you to hold me and want me, but I don’t want to be me anymore – and, so, I am afraid of wanting to be wanted. I am so ashamed of being afraid of being shamed, that I shame myself. I am a self-fulfilling prophecy – a cosmic practical joke played on me by myself. I want you to know where I am, but I am terrified of you hating me if you knew. This is the best I can do at making the irrational understandable – explaining my tenuous hold on sanity written in moments of lucidity. I don’t know if it will make sense – actually, I’m pretty sure it won’t.
I don’t want to die, but I wonder what it feels likes to want to live. I know I should know, after all I am sure I have felt that way before. But I forget. Maybe it’s just been too long. Maybe crying out to God to take me overwhelmed that tiny little spark of life. Maybe I just blew it out. Why, God? Why can’t I just fade away – disappear in some totally unobtrusive way? I don’t want to hurt anyone, not even myself, but I do – over and over again I cause pain. I don’t want to feel pain either, but the deafening dull pain in my chest is my constant companion. I just want to be numb – anesthetized – comatose. I’m not picky, just so damn tired.
Sometimes it comes quickly; other times it takes forever. Come it does, though, eventually. It steals into my heart making it ache incessantly, reminding me of how I have felt so many times for so damn long. It comes relentlessly, sucking the life out of my limbs, absconding with my initiative, killing my creativity, smothering my identity – all the while making my mind a constant, confused, raucous noise of despair. I am useless. I know better when I can think it through, but I am useless anyway. Useless to stop it; useless to fend it off; useless against the shame that rears on its hind legs and kicks me when I’m down; useless at being me.
The bottomless pit only varies in its darkness, not its depth. Otherwise, it would be an oxymoron. Sometimes it’s just a hanging, foreboding, and nebulous grey like an Ohio winter. Sometimes, like now, its pitch black and thick like treacle – a faceless, formless, suffocating mass that I can neither touch nor escape. It envelopes my mind leaving holes where once thoughts ran free. I know I still think, it’s just that there’s no memory of it, no outcome and no point to it. Minutes, hours, days – they just ooze by as a blubbery, gelatinous sludge – agonizingly slow and yet astonishingly fast. Time becomes immeasurable, the seconds ticking off in some somber death march and the hours getting gobbled up like they have no substance. Forever lasts but a moment and an instant is like eternity.
So, I stare. I stare at screens of information flowing by as I search for something – anything on which to be able to focus and keep out the noise. Of course, it just adds to the clamor. I stare at my own life dribbling along like a week of rain, wishing for something extreme to get my attention – but not really. I could care less whether it’s a heat wave or a thunder storm, just something other than no thing – even though I cling to the comforting discomfort of nothing. The nothingness is all that persists. I am an expert on nothingness. I know everything there is to know about it. It’s insidious and pervasive like a stalking cat, overwhelming all things in its path. It’s what I see when I stare at myself from the vantage of my place in the pit – an amorphous blob indistinct from the turbid bile that is trying to digest me. Nothing eats no thing, yet here I am.
The ache in my solar plexus spreads throughout; fingers of throbbing malaise ripping out the pages of my life day by day – the life I should be living but which evaporates as I watch from a distance. I want to engage, but I quake at the thought of having nothing to give. I want to be held, but am afraid of it. I want to withdraw, but can’t face the loneliness. I want to approach love, even while I walk backwards away from feeling anything. My head, stomach and heart are indistinct in their endless misery, and hate each other with no passion whatsoever. I want to tell you how much I need you, but I wince at every invisible word that cannot leave my mouth. I want to be loved by you, but I am terrified that there is nothing left to love. My biggest fear is being nothing, and I feel as if I am almost there.
RECOVERY
Children survive.
They seem to be built to survive almost anything.
The pain of loneliness, war, crime, rejection,
being ignored, being abused, being smothered, being used,
predation, exposure, abandonment, over-protection, –
these are just some of the things kids endure.
But to do so requires they develop tools –
most of them facades – fake faces.
It is these false countenances and big walls
that, as adults, keep distance between us.
They protect the “us” we can’t risk showing the world,
the one we forget exists as time moves on.
We show the safe “us”, the one that can’t get hurt,
because it’s not real.
But hurt we do.
The black void gets bigger and we become emptier.
Then, eventually, it dawns on us –
being an adult isn’t about being safe –
it’s about being real.
It’s about risk.
It’s about re-finding GOD.
Yes, eventually we realize –
if we can’t be honest with each other –
how can we trust anyone including GOD.
So eventually we learn to set aside our facades;
to expose our soft underbellies and face our pain and doubts;
to recognize our vulnerabilities and strive to overcome them;
to look longingly for GOD and yearn for hope.
We find GOD has been there the whole time – waiting for us.
We allow GOD to fill the void with joy.
Welcome back to being a child – now we’re ready for GOD.
Now we can survive anything because
Children survive