Winning Against Depression.

He'll be back.

Louis Shalako

When I was about fourteen, my parents got all worried about me. I had been a good student, and I didn’t want to go to school. I was sleeping all day, skipping school. I wouldn’t participate in family activities, such as going roller skating together or to Grandma’s for Thanksgiving, all stuff I had once enjoyed. I was up all night reading books, refusing to help out around the house unless I was paid for it, hanging out with all kinds of kids they hadn’t seen before, you know—Mom’s bottle of London Dry Gin began to mysteriously fall in the level and no one could really say what was going on.

They took me to a doctor who asked me if I was on drugs.

(I wasn’t.) As I recall, that one caused a little resentment.

What a bunch of idiots, I remember thinking.

At some point they determined that I was anemic—low blood pressure, low count on the red blood cells, low iron, and all that sort of thing.

And I ended up getting vitamin B-12 complex injections once a week for quite some time. So what was all this about?

My parents were getting separated. They were certainly talking about it, and they did so shortly thereafter.

And in some ways mood, atmosphere, it’s a little bit contagious. It’s not like I didn’t know something was wrong in our family, because it sure was wrong.

But it was a whole lot of things coming together.

I had grown two or three inches that year—it was the early stages of puberty, when the hormones are all over the map, teenagers get gawky, and introspective in my case, they get pimples and weird long curly black hairs popping up all over the place. You’ve got all sorts of opinions and deep inside you know you’re still a kid.

More than anything, you would like to be thought of as an adult. Of course you’re not, really.

***

It’s too easy to look back and state that I ‘suffered from depression since I was a kid.’

The fact of the matter is, all seventeen year-olds think they are going to be alone for the rest of their lives. 

They think their life is the pits, and that their parents don’t treat them well. The world can be a cold dark place when it seems like everyone else is having fun and adults have all sorts of special powers.

Kids are impatient. They can’t wait for childhood to end so they can have a bit of power over their own lives.

They can go places, do things, buy things, and decide how their own life is going to be run.

A kid of a certain age is dependent, when all about him look like fools.

I do not want to let depression define me. The truth is, I was deliriously happy from about age 18 to age 25. 

And yet even then, there were those days. I can’t deny it, and certainly there were no secrets between my girlfriend and I back then.

She knew. There was no denying it. Those days happened. Even then, it was a big mystery.

What in the hell was wrong with me?

The answer seemed pretty clear, years later: Why, I must have been suffering from depression.

I was suicidal at age 26. That was a bad day. I had the gun loaded and up to the side of my head.

A lot of shitty thoughts went through my head that day. I guess maybe I got a real good look at myself that day—and I wasn’t much.

I didn’t have much going for me, and I knew it. But there was something that stopped me. Call it ego, or something.

It took that much to realize that what I wanted was not to die. What I wanted, was to live—and for some reason it really didn’t feel like I was living.

I think a lot of suicides just want to end the suffering.

That was a long time ago, and the actual circumstances of the story are pointless.

That one didn’t last for long. Somehow, the real danger zone didn’t last too long, and although the aftermath, the so-called recovery, took two or three years, and two or three cities. The fact is, that I went through times when things were all right. Sure, I got down once in awhile, but who doesn’t? Everyone has a bad day, when things seem pretty black and it seems like all the shit will never end.

Whatever the hell was going on back then, when I had work, when I had money, and friends, and things to do and places to go, things went fine. Not that I didn’t have my days, my little outbursts of anger, my sudden little snaps of aggression. All of which are entirely normal within the daily parameters of human existence.

They are also symptoms of depression. Was I any different from any other person? 

I don’t know. It’s hard to say.

It's pretty easy to buy into the notion that you are different, and that there really is something wrong with you.

The question is, how do you deal with it?

Blaming depression or saying that something triggered it was an easy answer.

I went through another real bad time in my life. That one lasted for years. Literally, years, in fact from late 2004 until early in 2006, during a period of about a year and a half, I thought of suicide every stinking day. 

And I won’t say there was nothing wrong in my life, because there was.

The problem was that I couldn’t deal with it. That was the real struggle. I couldn’t get everything I wanted, not even what I needed.

Something really got to me.

Again, the actual circumstances are pointless. Because it’s all relative. It’s all very subjective—some other person, if I told the story, would say, “Well, that doesn’t seem all that bad. It’s sure not worth killing yourself over.”

Yeah, and they’d be right, too.

And the truth is that it wasn’t all that bad. I just couldn’t deal with it, for whatever reason. Looking back, it’s over now.

I got through it, somehow. No matter how bad it felt, or how long it took…it’s over.

It was real enough at the time, to me if no one else.

The first thought that went through my head in the morning was, “I have to kill myself.”

The last thought that went through my head at night was the same: “I have to kill myself.”

With that sort of shit going through your head you really have to wonder what stopped me.

How in the fucking hell did I ever survive that?

***

I got to a point where I dreaded winter. Winter is long, cold and dark, poverty sucks, my few friends were all the same kind of loser and yet there could still be moments when I was happy, or at the very least not suffering.

It was a question of putting in the time and getting through life.

A strange attitude, looking back. That attitude resulted in a lot of wasted years. Every day was a quest for diversion, and not much more.

All I wanted was not to suffer. I avoided anything I couldn’t deal with.

***

My old man got sick. After some years we had to sell his house, get rid of his stuff, put him in an old age home, and ultimately watch him die.

That was a very dark time. And winters are still the worst in some ways, because of all that cold and darkness.

The sheer, unremitting boredom, the loneliness, the isolation, the lack of hope for any real changes…the list is a long one.

And yet, looking back, this had been my best winter since about 19-fucking-99.

Seriously. By any way I care to measure it.

I keep as busy as I can. I work my ass off on something that is important to me.

I have skills, and some mighty good ones.

I have my own place. I have a car, I pay my bills and I have a few books and stories out there in the world.

Nobody really messes with me any more—not for long, anyways.

(It’s just not worth it, right.)

And I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks.

Today, yeah. Not my best day.

It could be worse—and I damned well know it.

The thing with depression is to survive the battles, and in the end, maybe, somehow, win the war.

It didn’t stop me from writing this story, did it?

END

Depression: Night and Day.

The thousand-yard stare.

The difference between a normal mood and depression is like night and day.

A buddy posted the following link on Facebook, and while I’m sure he meant well, it kind of sent me into a tailspin of depression that has lasted close to three weeks now. Anyhow, thanks for the heads-up.

It’s all about the provincial government stealing $469.00 a month from the disabled and putting them out into the streets. (Toronto Star.) 

And the list of symptoms on Wikipedia is bang-on. 

“Life events and changes that may precipitate depressed mood include childbirth, menopause, (or andropause, as I will be 54 this summer,) financial difficulties, job problems, relationship troubles, separation, bereavement and catastrophic injury...” (Like when you fall from a scaffold and break your back in three places, which ensures a life sentence of poverty, pain and suffering.)

And society’s biggest priority is to label you something other than an injured worker, too many of whom end up on disability or welfare, homeless and on the streets. Injured workers deserve justice—now we can’t have that, can we? Justice costs money after all.

Here’s an interesting perspective; is it terrorism/ Or is it just mental illness? (Psychology Today.)

Beating depression without the use of drugs: yes, and I hope you sell a lot of books, too. (Guardian.)

Why antidepressants don’t work. (Huffington Post.)

I know this to be true, as I was on Ativan, (Larazepam) for seven years. The withdrawal was sheer hell, and I weaned myself off of them over the course of some months. Even then, it was like my skin was crawling for about the next three and a half years, and there was a temptation to go back on it, if only for a little while, if only to get some relief. Long-term use leads to further psychotic effects. That’s because anxiety and depression can only be squelched for so long, and something has to give. Something will trigger it, and give rise to an expression of it. Of course, after relying on the dope for so long, I really didn’t have any coping skills. I had to learn some new ones. Just to warm the cockles of the bourgeoisie, you should know that they prescribe this shit like candy in our nation's jails. But of course, it doesn't work. Also, it increases psychosis, including paranoia and agression. Also, it's very cheap and the docs get a kickback. They have a vested interest, just as anyone working in the industry, to ensure the problem of crime never goes away. And they'll have jobs for life. They can buy nice big houses and live in calm and sequestered dignity.

The depression would be bad enough without the aggression, the irritability, the inability to do any work at all, even work I once enjoyed. That attack-dog syndrome is hard on the self-esteem, for we over-react to almost any provocation, and we live in provocative times. Naturally, we feel like shit afterwards.

The only good thing I can say about depression is the contrast. When it’s over you know it’s over. When other people are having a normal day, you feel fantastic—because you’re not depressed anymore. The difference is that vivid.

***

This may not help, but I wrote something about depression a long time ago. It’s a poem of sorts.



What about depression?

Give us your first impression

***

It hits like a physical blow

One is aware, that it will eventually go

But there is nothing else that you can do

In the meantime.

You can’t smile, you can’t laugh

No matter how funny the joke is

You feel a sense of shame

Because you cannot control

The way your face goes

It seems to be triggered;

A responsive phenomena

The switch

Into manic, sudden and intense

Uncomfortable, yet fantastic

You don’t need heroin when you’re manic

Like you could almost climb Mount Everest—

If you felt like it. But that’s for insecure people.

Ah! If only there were time. Still, while it lasts…

Seems like nothing and no one can touch you

Those are the really precious times, for it ends too soon.

But it’s when you are normal

Whatever that word defines

Trying to level out, all the peaks and valleys,

That’s what it’s all about

It’s the only true perspective

Now I must go forth, unto the grocery store

Get while the getting’s good; for after all

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

While I still have a sense of self esteem.

And anybody that don’t like that can bite me.


END