I am wrestling with bouts of depression lately, the worst that I’ve endured in many years. The same memories and lies and half-lies and half-truths, again and again, in the ears of my heart: Your parents threw you away. Your wife doesn’t need or want you. You aren’t able to keep your daughter safe. You aren’t able to provide for all of your family’s financial needs. You are a failure. You are alone. You are unloved. You have no impact or point. You are worthless. Mostly lies. These past three years have been hard, and I feel the fatigue of it. My wife is ill most of this year; we’ve been in and out of the hospital again for Inara; the financial struggles have been as hard as they’ve been unanticipated; not all my projects have been as successful as I would have liked, and that has taken its toll, too, in the emotional pressure-cooker of these past few years. Externally, matters are a little better now. But inside, now that the adrenaline reaction is past, I feel shriveled up and not particularly useful to anyone. I find what helps most is regular sleep when I can get it, B complex vitamins, reading psalms, evenings watching scifi shows with my wife (though she may be in pain), the laughter of my children, and a lot of writing. In telling stories, I create my own heroes, flawed as they are, to emulate. Father Polycarp hears the heavy tread of the beast Despair on the grimy stones in the alley at his back, hears the winter-cold whisper of its voice, and yet gets to his feet again, each time. Rahel never gives up; she is relentless in protecting and providing for her disabled child. Zadok is willing to chance a run through a field of hundreds of hungry dead because the woman he loves needs that from him. Yirmiyahu, though everything—everything—is ripped from him, keeps his eyes on his mission. The worst of it is the sharp edge of self-criticism at feeling depression. Depression, after all, might be expected after the tremendous upheavals I and my family have gone through, these past few years. But though it might be expected, it is not rational. The lies my subconscious whispers to me are not rational. So I am harsh with myself: You are depressed, so you are even more worthless. That digs me in deeper. Sad as I am at Robin Williams’ passing (may he find peace), it is a strange comfort to know that he wrestled with the dark hours of the night, too. If a man who made as many people laugh as he did, or who touched as many hearts, can wrestle with depression (and to the deep, deep extent that he clearly did), then maybe feeling depressed is not so damning, after all. If my own St. Polycarp in What Our Eyes Have Witnessed wrestled so deeply with depression and yet worked tirelessly to feed the living and redeem the restless dead, then perhaps it is possible to feel worthless sometimes AND YET lovingly provide for your family and yet do great things. Or at least good things. One thing I know, at least. Whether or not that whisper in the dark hours is lying or truthful when it names me failure, I am all that my daughters have. So I will have to be enough. (And in the language of faith, I would add: Here God has bid me stand, and he evidently loves me and feels that I am enough.) Writing helps. Even writing this post has helped. To stay on my feet, I will write, as I always do. Feeling gray, I will go make some beauty. Feeling gray and faded, I will go make some colors. From No Lasting Burial: “In a cruel world, a boy or a man must find beauty where he can, or hunt after it until he does. Or else the hard edges of life will gut him as a man guts a fish, and toss him wriggling to die in the sand.” Stant Litore
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 02:34:39 +0000
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