Depression

I've been trying to do more regular postings for a while, but, try as I might, no subjects seemed to have come to mind: at least, no subjects about which I feel I have anything useful to say.

I've come to the conclusion that the reason for this is that I've been wanting to write about a specific something, but been too afraid to do so, so it's sat there like a baby reluctant to be born and holding all the other babies up (yes, I know, it's not a very good metaphor, but it's the one in my head).

Clearly nothing else is going to happen until I get this one out of the way. So here goes.

I've recently gone through I fairly severe bout of depression. This is not unusual for me, nor, really, surprising, given that I've recently chosen to be made redundant from a stressful job. However the intensity and duration have been unexpected, and unpleasant.

Why don't I want to talk about it here?

I know that be posting on the Internet, I am making my comments available, in principle, to everyone, from close friends to prospective employers. And, because of the power to download, and to share, I may find that my comments are unable to be taken back.

It might seem strange to some, but I am less uncomfortable with the possibility of strangers poring over my miseries than of close friends and family members finding out how bad things can be, and have been. But I have not worn a mask in front of strangers. I have with family and friends. It's partly down to pride/shame, partly not wanting to give extra burdens to those who love me, and partly a desire to behave normally for a while, and push the Black Dog out of sight.

I don't know whether it's really true or not that the peoples of the far north have many words for snow, but either way I'm sure that they are aware of many kinds of snow.

We only have one word for depression, but I've experienced many kinds of depression. If they didn't all happen around the same time I might not even believe they were connected, although they can overlap. Here are some:

• A heavy, aching, soul-sucking dread. The first time it happened, many years ago when I was still immersed in evangelicalism, I thought it might be a demonic attack. It takes all the meaning out of the world. I wonder if Philip Pullman's spectres were inspired by this.
• An intense conviction that nothing will ever be OK again: that how you feel now will never change. There is no hope.
• Sudden, unpredictable, attacks of fear. I might be working away at my Mac when suddenly one would sweep over me, and I would rush to my bed, climb in, and pull the covers over my head (I suppose this is technically anxiety, but to me – and others – anxiety is an integral part of depression.
• Loneliness. The certainty that no-one will ever understand. Including God. If God exists.
• A feeling that the world has become monochrome: a longing to be surrounded by colour again, not by shades of grey.
• Waves of grief that seem to come from nowhere and leave my crying helplessly. Although the grief seems to want to attribute itself to specific reasons, I'm not convinced. Sometimes that little bit of me that is above the storm looks, observes, and wonders where it has come from.
• The conviction that when I am in this state I am seeing the world as it really is (I hasten to add I don't think I'm being very original when I think this). We live briefly. We rarely realise our dreams. We grow fail and die. Generation after generation, the same tale, told by an idiot, signifying nothing.
  
  

I'm now looking at this from outside. I'm trying to record the experience before I forget. Why. I don't really know. But if the title of this blog means anything, I cannot leave it out, and I owe it to the people I love to be real with them about this, at least in writing. Maybe I'll honour them with more trust and vulnerability the next time it happens, as it certainly will.

Thank you to the people who love me and have stuck by me. Unobtrusively, unpatronisingly, and persistently, with simple friendship.

Here, gratis, is a poem I wrote many years ago, about the same experience. I originally titled it 'Withdrawn'.

Muffled Voices

Slide into obscurity, as

Double glazed panels slot into place

Around me

Familiar faces become slightly blurred

And infinitely distant.

Where before, hands would touch

And speech connect,

My voice reflects back on itself,

and my fingertips slide defeated from the glass

Why the title? II (the first bit)

 It’s considered appropriate to tell someone to ‘Get Real’ when you think a proposed course of action is certain to end in disaster, or, alternatively, when you think what someone believes is preposterous. I suppose it is shorthand for ‘You’d better adjust your plans/beliefs to reflect the world as it is, not as you’d like it to be’. It’s normally said quite aggressively, as part of a campaign of treading heavily and proprietarily all over the garden of someone else’s dreams.

I, however, would like to convert into something a little humbler but, perhaps, a little deeper. In writing a blog in which I am encouraging myself (and hopefully, others) to Get Real I think I mean:

Firstly, through how I think, how I behave, and what I do, to become closer to the person I ‘ought’ to be to become, and be, as truly Me as possible. I realize this statement is fraught with questions. Is there a sort of ‘platonic me’ of which I am an imperfect copy? Where does the ‘ought’ come from? And how, and by what yardsticks, do I measure my progress in this ambition? I might try and tackle these questions a bit more in later posts. At the moment, though, all I can say are there times when I feel more genuine, more three dimensional as it were, and times when I feel more as though I am playing a part, being less me; diminishing myself into two dimensions, as it were. I imagine that other people sometimes feel the same.

Secondly, by trying to comprehend, to understand, to grasp, or, more realistically, to simply persist in wrestling with the fundamental mysteries that hover forever on the boundaries of the banal little worlds that we construct around ourselves. Sufi Islam frequently refers to the Divine as simply ‘The Real’, and for good reason. I do not discount the possibility that believers in the supernatural are mistaken: possibly the outcome of this journey will see me leaving belief for atheism or agnosticism, although I think this unlikely. However, it is crucial to note that a purely secular naturalistic worldview does not enable one to dispense with these questions of horrifying profundity: in some ways it makes them more acute. That I inhabit a universe which appeared (or has always existed) for no particular reason, other than that it simply is, and in which a tiny, momentary, flicker of conscious life briefly exists is, to me, an abyss as terrifying as that of a necessarily existent God.

It is pretty obvious that these two aspirations are linked: it might even be argued that the interplay of the two is what religion is all about (although this hadn’t occurred to me before writing this post!). 

Why the title?

Good question. I’ll deal with the second bit first.


There are so many ways I could define myself (many of which will, I hope, emerge during the lifetime of this blog): so why highlight being Christian, and being gay?  Here, in no particular order, are some reasons that come to mind…

• They are, I think, the two main points of friction between me and the world around me (although rarely at the same time, thank goodness). In a broadly secular world my Christian-ness is something that sets me apart. Christians, and religious believers generally, are increasingly seen as a little odd, in the UK at least. The prevailing culture amongst the intelligentsia is that belief in the supernatural is something that we have (or at any rate ought to have) outgrown. On the other hand, being gay also separates one, even now, and of course especially in the church. I think there are gay people who have never experienced any angst because of their sexuality, but my impression is that they are still rare.
• Not many of us live in that Venn-diagram overlap of being both gay and Christian. This is not surprising. Gay living growing up within the church frequently either run away from the church, or run away from their own sexuality. I have experience of doing both.
• Christianity seems to be a part of me that my culture seems to believe harks back to the past, whereas being gay is often thought of as one of the new things (the reality is, of course, more complicated). As a result each stands for rather more than itself in a sort of internal battle between tradition and post-modernity.

I don’t really like the word ‘post-modern’. Apart from anything else I’m not 100% sure I know what it means. At the moment I am, I suppose, using it as a short-hand to describe the world I find myself in. This is a world where claiming to have the monopoly on Truth is getting more and more difficult to sustain (as does the use of the capital T). Science digs increasingly deeply into some very strange ‘hows’ but society struggles with the ‘whys’. A local Muslim butcher (wonderfully!) advertises Halal Christmas turkeys; monks are called in to calm angry spirits before Bangkok’s new state of the art airport can be opened (in 2005); freedom of choice is regarded as a fundamental right, and yet the current scientific world view strongly suggests that free will is an illusion. How do I – how does any of us? – navigate through this web of contradictions?


Now the first bit: Getting Real. 


That will have to wait until the next post…


(I have made myself a rule that each post has to be written at one sitting. Hopefully this will encourage not to procrastinate, and not to wait until each piece is deathless prose before its uploaded. It should also limit each post’s length!)


(Actually I cheated with this one: it took two visits to the keyboard: but it is my first one)