Jesse: How are you?
Me: Good!
Jesse: ….
Jesse: Huh. You usually say, “I’ve been better” or “OK.”
Me: Well, I’m trying that “Act as if” thing.
The simple truth is, I haven’t felt like myself for going on two years now, and I’m sick of it. If you asked me what the problem was I couldn’t tell you. I don’t think I’m depressed, exactly, but I’ve had specific bouts of panic and anxiety. Other than that, though, it just feels like it’s not me living in my head. Or at least, not the me I’m used to. Everything seems up in the air, topsy-turvy.
For all my problems in the past, I never felt anything other than *stable*. Now instability is the order of every day. It doesn’t help that my father was exactly my age when he became ill with manic depression, an illness he struggled with the rest of his life. But that’s a perfect example of how weird things are – the old me wouldn’t have put any significance on an anniversary like that.
John would always tease me when I would write something elliptical on the weblog about a problem I was having, without spelling out what was wrong. (For example, I could have just left the exchange at the beginning stand as is. Which is what I intended to do, at first.) Well, in this case the problem is I don’t know what the problem is.
A related story
My brother Matt and I were driving to Hinsdale together for some holiday. We were laughing about whenever you entered my grandmother’s house, she would be sitting in the library. You would come in, give her a kiss, and brightly say, “How are you, Didi?” And she would say, without fail in that gravelly voice of hers, “Lousy.”
So my brother bet me $5 that we would walk in the house, ask Didi how she was, and she would reply “Lousy.” I thought, well, I’ll probably lose the bet, but it’ll be funny to see if she’s that predictable. So we walk in, and Matt says, “How are you, Didi?”
“Terrible,” she replied.
Best $5 I ever won.
OK, back to our regularly scheduled programming. I wonder how Amy Yasbeck is doing?
Okay, apparently nobody else is touching this one, so I’ll go first.
I’d just like to start by saying that I wasn’t actually teasing you about the whole “I’m writing in my blog that something potentially serious/dangerous/painful is going on, but I won’t address it specifically, thus creating a situation in which I am either a) soliciting some response, whether concern, advice or merely a shared emotional experience without undue vulnerability; b) venting what’s on my mind without really considering my audience; or c) actively engaging in now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t tactics that create a sense of personal empowerment in a time of anxiety and instability because even if I feel out of control, I can control what people know about me” thing. I was admonishing you, not teasing you. I don’t like it when online writers (or writers of any sort, for that matter) do that, because it violates the contract between writer and reader, whether that relationship is professional, aesthetic or personal. In your case, your weblog is personal first, then aesthetic, then political. People read your site because they’re interested in you — not just your taste in movies or your feelings about Wesley Clark versus Howard Dean. You. To use cryptic language describing how things are going in your personal life is at once leading, withholding and alienating. I don’t like it. So I said so, because I take the time to read your site, and that means you and I have entered into an informal contract. That’s important to me.
The next part of that contract stems from the fact that you have a comments system. That means you want to know what people think — about you, about your ideas, about the world. After a post like the above, I feel like I’d be violating our contract by not telling you what I think.
I think you’re depressed. Not exactly news to you, I know. You describe your emotional state as disoriented and occasional anxious or panicked. All of those internal states are compatible with depression: a sense of not recognizing one’s self, of not having a clear sense of one’s direction or purpose or selfhood, of not belonging in the present. Dislocation and disorientation can create anxiety and panic, especially when other people are involved. If you don’t know who or where you are, you can’t accurately position yourself relative to other people. You have no basis for communication, for friendship, for intimacy. Without your own rudder, you can’t navigate interpersonal relationships.
I’ve been depressed. I’ve been catastrophically, suicidally depressed. I still battle depression. And you know what? That gives me exactly ZERO ability to understand what you’re going through. Everyone is unique, and our emotional states are untranslatable. I can say, “I see that you’re depressed,” and I can try to understand how that affects you, but especially in the case of depression (which catapults its alienated victim into an endless black pit of intolerable self) I can’t really share in your experience. That’s the nature of the beast: you can’t share it.
Here’s what I can say: get treatment. Treatment can mean just about anything — it doesn’t matter: the act of addressing your emotional state, of seeking to alleviate your symptoms, of actively trying to regain your sense of self, of DOING SOMETHING, is more valuable than the treatment itself. You feel like you have lost yourself in a world you don’t understand. Attempting to take hold of yourself and seek help is a powerful first step.
You are not your Dad. My Dad left me some genetic gifts, depression among them. Maybe your Dad left you some gifts that are causing you problems. Maybe not. Regardless, you have a life experience and a breadth of knowledge that he did not. You have options he did not. You can make decisions he couldn’t. You are a different person.
I don’t know if I’m cheerleading for you or for myself or for both. But goddamnit, Adam — get your needs met. Nobody can do it for you. We can just stand at a distance, and shout the occasional encouragement, and hope.
Great comment from John on a very enlightening post. I just wanted to comment that I laughed out loud about your grandmother’s comment, “Terrible.” It made me laugh, then I felt sad for her. I’d love to hear you tell that story in person. Be well.
John: I might have said “admonishing” or “chastising,” but I guess I was soft-pedaling it. I knew what you meant. Honestly, though, I disagree with you. I don’t think I enter into a contract with anyone by writing this site. They can read it or not, as they see fit. Sometimes I just want to get something off my chest, but I may not want to give details. It’s the old “power of the press resides in those who own one” thing. I guess I was doing b), and I’m OK with that.
That said, I appreciate your words of encouragement. I think writing this post is one of the things I’m doing. We’ll have to see about the rest.
Kevin: No need to feel sad for my grandmother. It was just her way – she wasn’t really “terrible.” She led an amazingly full life and touched a lot of people – and what more can any of us ask?
Adam: while it’s true that you can write what you want or not, and people can read it if they want or not, if you write in a vacuum you end up in a vacuum.
I have to say i agree with John on many of his points; while writing a blog with comments doesn’t necessarily make it a “contract” of a certain type, i think he’s correct in YOUR case – from what you’ve shared, and the manner you do it, it’s clear that he’s right – which is quite a compliment – he’s a good writer, and recognizes not only your writing skills, but also he’s expressing OUR interest in knowing you even better. ——–and his advise – GET TREATMENT – is right on, as well. What specifically that will mean is up to you, and take it from a rather happy, healthy homo like myself, the best part IS the knowledge that you are taking care of yourself – when I finally dove in and tried a therapist, the best part was feeling that I was finally paying attention to my insides that were screaming – you can be EVEN BETTER!
Sorry, but I’m not buying the whole “Adam has a contract” thing. A writer, like any artist, creates because he/she must. The response, while possibly gratifying or not, is secondary. A writer who writes primarily because he has a contract, implicit or explicit, is a hack.
As an artist/writer, Adam, can you explain why I keep writing in 3-part sentences?
As far as therapy goes, I’ve been in couples therapy, which salvaged my beloved’s and my relationship 10 years ago. Then again, we primarily rebonded because we both thought the therapist was a doof.
For some reason, I keep thinking of a line I read somewhere -that a character couldn’t see the word “therapist” without putting a pause after the “the” section of the word.
Thanks, Lisa. Well put.
During my twenties, I spent a lot of time writing poetry and attending poetry readings. Over the course of about ten years or so, I learned to separate poets into two main categories: poets who got on the mic to communicate their work to an audience of (hopefully) appreciative listeners, and poets who got on the mic to hear themselves speak
In poetry workshops, my first question to any writer was, “What do you want your audience to understand after having read this piece?” If the poet had no coherent answer to this question, I would usually say something like the following: “The urge to create is a universal and powerful drive. All of us hold something inside ourselves that, in one way or another, we seek to give shape to in the external world. This is a sacred urge of a uniquely human experience, and as such it should be honored. That being said, when one chooses to take the fruit of one’s creative labors and share it with the world, this creates a new thing, a phenomenon that is greater than the artist or the audience alone. Any act of creation has merit in and of itself, even if it’s never witnessed by anyone but the creator. However, when the creative act is intentionally shared with others, this creates a connection, a process of communication in which all parties participate and for which all parties take responsibility.
“In short, if you write only for yourself, and only for your own understanding, that is a worthy labor and I support you in it. If you write for yourself *and* for the enjoyment of others, however, you must know your audience and take their needs and experiences into account. Otherwise, understanding, communication and connection cannot happen.”
It is simply unsupportable to argue that a writer who writes to an audience cannot take that audience into consideration without being a “hack” (which, you will notice, is exactly what Lisa is calling me by her argument). We write in a particular language — this helps a particular audience understand our words. We write about specific events from a specific perspective — this attracts or repels readers accordingly. There is simply no rational reason to publish written work other than the desire for readers; and in order to be read, we must make it possible for an audience to understand us. Unless you’re writing in a complete vacuum (which applies to neither Adam’s work nor my own), it’s simply impossible to publish work without, in some way or another, taking your audience into consideration.
And therapists aren’t rapists.
I’ve walked into yet another strange world where black is white and up is down, merely because we think so, and I think all I can say with certainty is that I’m done.
Just to clarify, I was responding to what Lisa said about writing, not about therapy. I have little experience with therapists or therapy personally.