How Do I Pull Myself Out of The Dark?
Editor’s note: new political columns and Tal’s take on sandwiches will resume in October, after a major book deadline.
— David
Dear Banner Carrier,
I’ve struggled with depression since adolescence, spending more time in its grips than not. But I always emerged, every time. I became practiced at recognizing not only my depressive state, but the signs of hope, that all is not lost. I knew when I was climbing up and out and became familiar with that path even though it was different each time.
Now, at the cusp of 40, I’ve been in the deepest depression of my life for the last four years. I keep waiting for the signs, making the motions, and it doesn’t budge, it simply oscillates from deep to devastating. I take medication, I am in therapy, I understand the power of my mind ... and yet.
In my un-depressed state, I’d describe myself as exuberant with an outsized curiosity and zeal for all things familiar and new. This current iteration of four years of depression is overwhelming and I don’t know if this is all there is for me now. I know you can’t possibly know if this is my forever, but do you know of anything new I could possibly try? Some magic mantra? Potion or elixir? I’ve seen you grapple with depression openly (a tremendous comfort) and even without advice, maybe even just a small note of commiseration is all my wretched heart requires.
Signed,
nothing woman
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Dear nothing woman,
Have you tried yoga? What about a little sunshine? I’ve heard great stuff about essential oils. Have you tried just taking a walk around the block? Have you really tried to be happier, I mean, just like, look down inside and think happy thoughts?
I’m kidding—I’m sure you’ve tried all that, plus possibly had MLM-linked supplements pushed at you, been faulted for somehow lacking discipline, or interrogated about your most intimate habits by well-meaning acquaintances. I wish I had a magic key for you. I really do. Some mantra, like the “Litany Against Fear” in Dune that’s meant to banish all anxiety. I wish I could tell you that essence of lavender in your humidifier or a set of 15 crunches every twelve hours would banish the black dog of depression. But I don’t think you came to me for that. You wanted a word of hope, because four years in the dark is a very long time, and an even longer time to feel your hope ebb away to nothing.
I am so sorry that you’ve spent nearly half a decade feeling this way—I know that sensation, of being somehow numb and raw to pain at the same time, of feeling trapped in a bell jar inside yourself, of being a trussed homunculus in your own chest, howling. When your skin hurts and your bones hurt and you feel like it would take a wizard to summon the kinetic energy to make yourself vertical instead of horizontal. It’s a bad bone-riddled desert place I’ve resided in for days and weeks and months, but never years, and I am so, so sorry to hear about the relentlessness of this iteration.
Here is what I can say: despite all that torment, you are still seeking to get better, through medication and therapy (and with the sheer number of medications out there perhaps a change is due in that quarter). For four years, you’ve persisted, eaten and slept and woken and eaten and slept again, listening to the body’s imperative to live. The body always wants to live, even when the mind is a reluctant passenger.
It has been a spectacularly crappy few years in the wide world—isolation and mass death and plague and fascism and slaughter—and perhaps expecting unflagging cheeriness from yourself in such apocalyptic times is unreasonable. But you have lived through it, and you continue to, looking for aid and for light and surcease. I can offer you nothing but my hope that sometime soon enough, maybe even before autumn ends, you’ll see the outline of your ladder upward in the distance, like Jacob the Patriarch dreaming his dream of heaven. He had to wrestle an angel to win that vision, and suffered injury, and the battle was protracted. But he lived and he changed and faced many choices in his long life.
Death is the end of all choices, the end of change, and I will reject it as long as I can, even when it feels like it would be easier and kinder to keel over into nothingness. I wish you the same resolution. And I wish better for you. All I can give you is a small kind word in the dark.
Yours,
The Banner Carrier