Entry #688919, added on 02-28-10 @ 2:57 pm EST
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I took a collection of Sylvia Plath poems to school with me the other day, but couldn't get through them. Every word was a little suicide and I found it hard to see beyond that. Over the past couple weeks, there has been suicide after suicide, another life done before nature intended a finish. It seeps into my skin and poisons my blood. It distorts reality.
I know that Plath was a great poet, but knowing this doesn't make me love her poetry. I guess it's because I am prejudiced against her in a way, like I can't see joy or beauty in her words because each one smells like gas or drips with blood. It puts me off, and it annoys me, frankly. Not that I can't enjoy words for what they are, but when you're surrounded by bad news and try to read to escape it, it really doesn't make much sense to fatten up on more of the bad news. Plus, it's tedious, reading all the same old stories, not that Plath did this, but again, prejudice and all that. I need to read her when the sun is shining and when I haven't heard about any more suicides. I need to be wearing white and feeling hungry. I think this would let the poppies and beehives through.
The other day, when visiting a blog about a guy who was missing and presumed to have committed suicide, I was impressed by one thing in all the corresponding comments: depression and suicidal thoughts are entirely unoriginal. What's more, everyone seemed to be competing to see who was the most depressed, which really irritated me. One would say that she had been depressed and on Paxil for this many years, and another one would up the ante by describing the time she ended up in the hospital after slicing her wrists. Please. I get that people hurt. I hurt, too. I'm just not sure that some people aren't getting a little too much pleasure out of being sad. So, I chimed in with my usual 'look, you'll be okay if you re-train your thoughts', and before you knew it, all the competing sadsacks were out for blood, my blood, because how dare I insinuate that their problems have nothing to do with chemical imbalances and disease affliction? Lord.
We exist in the time of a 'chemical revolution'. Everything around us is steeped in the stuff, and if we have a bad day, our physicians give a prescription so that we may not only breathe it, but we can consume it as well. Obviously, this isn't a good thing for everyone, because chemical 'imbalances' are hugely misdiagnosed, which would negate the need to re-balance them, see? In other words, a lot of people are taking a drug they don't need and it's screwing up their heads when all they really needed to do was either talk it out or move a little. Have I ever been clinically depressed? Apparently, yes, but I say 'apparently' because even though my doctor said I was, I refused to accept it. I was agoraphobic and suffered panic disorder, each a diagnosis I couldn't argue with, but did it make sense to treat these problems with drugs? Not for me, no. I knew that to get over it I was going to have to force myself to confront my problems, and let me tell you, I had some seriously frightening periods where I couldn't find a single reason why any of my effort mattered. I had the 'what's the point of life' thoughts, and I had days where getting out of bed seemed fairly impossible, but I seized the good days with both hands and tried to read and learn myself out of it.
I have to admit that over the last couple days, I've had those thoughts. I know I've been having them because of all the suicides I've been reading about, and I seemed to tap into their desperation and sadness more than I would have liked. I went back to my sister's years of major depression, and I remember how frustrated I felt at not being able to present a single reason as to why life is great in a way that she could relate to. She didn't care. She was drowning in her thoughts. I also understood why she won't talk much about those days now, because discussing it makes it come back a little, and she's been training herself to think differently, which apparently works. That's all she'll say, that when you feel like this, you either jump or you get a life. She jumped, survived, and subsequently decided to get a life. I admire her more than she knows for this. I haven't jumped, but I worry that one day I'll think about it, because she did. I also haven't managed to harness my fears, yet, and as such do not feel I am living the life I'd like to. I blame myself. I get overwhelmed with frustration and self-loathing, I think about starving kids the world over and hate myself more for being so weak when I have so much, and then I have trouble seeing the point in things. I am not an original. I am a slave to my own bad thinking.
So, when I read all the comments of all those people who seemed to be almost excited about labelling themselves as 'depressed', it annoyed me. It was like they wanted to defend their depressive feelings rather than acknowledge what they truly are: damaged thinking. I am not ashamed of the way I feel, most of the time, because I am in good company, but I certainly would be ashamed of myself if I decided to just lay down and take it. It's part of who I am, now, but it isn't the best part of me. I don't want to feel sad all the time, and it sickens me when I have a day in which nothing can make me smile, but I have come to understand that a quiet surrender to a bad day is infinitely better than surrendering to a lifetime of chemical dependency and blind acceptance. To me, it's not unlike accepting that you have terminal cancer just because someone takes a look at you and says it's so. Why do so many people give their lives over to a thought pattern that can't be seen, feeling it's real and tangible despite it having no organic roots, but will reject the idea of recovery? We dwell. We ruminate. We lose ourselves to driving in circles.
I understand what depression is. I've lived with it and studied it and been touched by it. I'm at the point, now, where I'm angry with it, because it is useless and damaging, and I resent what it takes from a person. I'm past the whole 'woe is me' garbage and have moved on to the anger that it merits. I don't think there's an herbal tea that will cure it, or that a makeover will wash it away. I think it's about finding a shred of courage in ourselves and building on it, slowly and methodically, learning about it and finding ways to numb, one second at a time. This doesn't mean I think those who jump are weak, anymore than I think those who need meds to cope are. I understand both, absolutely. I'm just tired of it all, for them and for me. I'm tired of letting my feelings take the wheel. I hate that I have to learn my way out of it because I like immediate results. There are no shortcuts, though. You have to just let yourself be, which I find ridiculously hard, but I try just the same. Just, be.
The other bloggers can be annoyed with me because of my refusal to give it a body if that's their wish. It won't help them, won't take their pain away or correct their injured minds and they'll still be the same when the smoke clears. If one person actually gets what I'm saying and chooses to take their life back because of it, then I'm cool with that. Sometimes, people have to speak up and let others know that the world is not flat and that cigarettes kill. I'd rather know what can be done than sit back and let the darkness take me.
It's more interesting.
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