Mindful Ink

My name is Gideon, and I suffer from severe depression.

I’ve mentioned my health a bit these past few months - and this is it.  I’ve had a very, very nasty episode of major depression and it, more or less, completely incapaciated me.  Some of you may have experience with depression, some of you may not.  For those of you who don’t quite know what it is, I’ll explain a bit.  The reason I hadn’t been a bit more forward about it is… well, depression is not well understood by people who’ve not actually experienced it.  It’s like love - unless you’ve been in it, you can’t begin to fathom it.  

People often think you can “think your way out of it,” “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” etc.  But it is like any other disease and there is no magic bullet cure.  For some, medications help, for others therapy.  Neither have ever worked well for me, I simply must wait it out and hope it passes quickly.  But it remains an embarassing disease, especially for people who are used to being independent and in control of their emotions - because it takes your very willpower away.  The tool you would use to extricate yourself is the very thing that is broken - and it is hard not to despair over that, if nothing else.  And people who do not understand it may mistake it for some weakness on your part, some moral failing of some sort.

It takes your identity away from you in a very real way - you are no longer who you were, who you’ve been.  You’re something else that for some insane, horrible reason cannot get yourself to do something as simple as  getting out of bed or do a load of dishes even though you are perfectly, physiologically, capable of it.  You get mad easily, without any warning, angry in ways you didn’t even know you could be.  And other times you are overwhelmed by despair so palpable you simply do not know how you can even make it through the day.  The things that delight you, no longer do.  Nothing makes you happy, nothing can shake off the apathy (at its best) for more than a few moments.  You’re not you, but some part of you remains - watching and horrified.

Depression, some scientists believe (the research on this topic is far from consistent), caused by an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain.  And it may be, it may not.  Some people have depression that is triggered by something, some just “get it.”  There are degrees of depression - some just have fatigue, sleeping and eating problems, etc. but are still able to get about the business of their lives.  For some people there are feelings of “saddness,” etc.  Some do not.  

Others, like mine, are nearly total in their devestation - leaving you unable to do much of anything and no part of your life left undamaged or effected.   The long and short of it is you are not able to do anything  - read a book, see friends, clean the house, watch tv at times.  Your existence is composed of exhaustion, despair and boredom.  School was impossible, and I had to drop last semester.  Seeing my friends exhausted me to the point of almost total isolation.  My sleep schedule moved wildly about - moving between hypersomnia and insomnia.  Sleeping for 14 hours one day, awake for 30 the next.

So, why am I telling you all this?  Well, I’m getting better.  I’m not better yet, but I am after nearly four months - finally, thankfully, improving.  That’s why I got things going here again (well, that and the lawsuit business seems to have dissappeared) - I was finally able to bear some of the responsibility for maintaining the site; but that is also why there hasn’t been the same level of content there used to be - yet.  It is very difficult for me to concentrate or focus for any length of time - reading any signifigant amount of text is nearly impossible still.  The loss of my mental accuity has been the hardest for me, as I place so much of my sense of self there - and it has very slowly been returning.  But I’m determined to get Mindful Ink going as well as Scholastici.us was at its best, just bear with me a bit as I get back in the saddle.

 But still, I am improving.  And now I have the messy business of returning to life.  I have the business of restoring order and trying to repair my life - socially, academically and physically.  But it isn’t easy…  And I’m not alone in it.  Depression, even this level of depression, is not terribly uncommon and as one of my professors told me “It seems like every semester there’s at least one student this happens to…”

I’ve not had depression in many, many years - and had thought myself cured of all but the winter blues so many get.  But when I was younger, severe episodes were common and I am still paying for not having a better idea of what to do when it was over.  For instance, my GPA is not particularly high.  Sure, for the past few years I’ve rarely had less than an A, but my early years are a mess of not withdrawing from classes, or not fighting when a professor wouldn’t let me withdraw because I didn’t know that they could not hold my health against me and to go back and get these things taken care of.  It’s too late, now; but graduate/law school applications will be more difficult because I am carrying the load of those early years where I was not a bad student, but rather a sick and ignorant one.

So figuring out how to get back in the swing of things is something very important - because no matter what you do or who you are - life happens - and your boogie man may not be depression but it may be cancer, or a car wreck, or a natural disaster or any of the other “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and it is vital to know, as you look about the ruin of your old life, how to rebuild.  

So, expect Part II next week sometime.  I’ll try to explore with you some of what I’ve learned about getting things back to “normal.”

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