“A whole society soon
metamorphosed into my benefactors. They soon drove me to illicit liquor joints where
I sat all alone at a slimy table and drank cheap brandy, peg after peg. The
drinks drenched my soul in shame. I felt utterly worthless. I felt unworthy of
life. I longed for death.”
That is quoted from my
forthcoming book, Autumn Shadows. I
experienced a protracted period of depression that lasted a few years in my
late thirties. Depression makes you feel totally worthless. Worse, the whole
world appeared to exist for the singular purpose of decimating me. I refused to
trust anyone.
My experience is that a depressive
does not want to talk to anyone. How can he talk when everyone is his perceived
enemy? At best, like poet Shelley, he can cry to the wind in the air to lift
him like a dead leaf and carry him away to the emptiness in the skies. “I fall
upon the thorns of life! I bleed!” Shelley lamented to the West Wind.
I used to sit on the
parapet wall of a culvert near a graveyard and envy the dead people buried
there. Suicidal thoughts overwhelmed me frequently. But the depressive carries
on. His longing is not to die but to hide his shame. To hide, not to reveal. Rather,
he thinks that too much has been revealed already.
I was convinced that the
society around me had caught hold of my shame, shook it out and held it up for
the whole world to see. “Then you become less than the shame,” I have written
in Autumn Shadows. “You become
utterly disgusting.”
What is there now to talk
about when everything has already been exhibited by others? No, the depressive
doesn’t want to talk. He wants to hide. His soul belongs to the graveyard. He
is on the run. To the netherworld. Sinking. Sinking in a state of free fall. He
has to hit the bottom. Not with a bang but with a whimper. Inaudible whimper.
PS. Written for
In(di)spire Edition 232: Why is talking about depression still a stigma in our
society? #depression
No, Ms Arora (the one who raised the above question at the blogger’s
community), talking about depression is not a stigma, I think. The depressive
is the stigma. He thinks so at least. So he won’t talk. That has been my
experience.
PPS. My
experience has helped me counsel a few other individuals who passed through the
hell called depression. What I did was to use cognitive behavioural therapy one
of whose fundamental assumptions is that depression is rooted in cognitive
distortions. I assist the depressive to look at his or her distortions like ‘I’m
good for nothing’ or ‘The world around me is conspiring against me.’ It
requires a lot of patient efforts to bring a depressive back to healthy
attitudes. Spring will follow winter, as Shelley concluded his Ode to
the West Wind. But the snow takes its own horrendous time to thaw.
Will surely make it a point to read this book soon.
ReplyDeleteArvind Passey
http://www.passey.info
The book will be ready only by new year. Thanks for the interest.
DeleteI can relate to it. Few years back it was incomprehensible to me how one could feel depressed when there's so much to do & so many beautiful things around to get involved in, so many things to develop interest in but, gradually when I too, like it usually happens I guess, faced some very hard hitting experiences in life during the grown up phase (not growing up phase), depression raised its ugly head right in my face. I understand well about the stigma you experience and for people who've had it easy are not capable of understanding it, which makes us feel little in front of them. It's a very sad phase. I pray one finds his support system God forbid should one ever have to go through it.
ReplyDeleteDepression is a protracted agony. Those who haven't experienced it won't ever understand it. I still remember how people laughed at me during those days.
Delete