interlude: home and depression

I ended up going home to Pennsylvania for Labor Day weekend and had a great time with my posse, the Lebanon Fury (as we have taken to calling ourselves, because really, is there anything cooler than a clusterfuck of thirtysomething professionals referring to themselves by a badass gang name?). We hit our customary sleazy dive bar, where one guy claimed to have thought I was a college student (yeah!!) and he called me a “little hottie,” and another guy declared that I’m an “undercover freak.” Oh, that’s so true! Only not so much with the “undercover” part. I was also eager to convince the sleazebags that I worked in the Russian fetish porn industry, but alas, I lost my window of opportunity. Next time, maybe. Oh, and we also played laser tag, which is something I’ve never done before. It was surprisingly fun. Less surprising: I did terribly, coming in last place among both teams.

I also got some freelancing done, which freed up Labor Day for nonstop relaxing back at my condo.

This upcoming weekend, aside from working on more freelancing, I’d really like to check out the Jerry Springer Opera in DC (it closes on Sunday), but I think laziness and horrible Hurricane Hanna-related weather will probably keep me at home. Plus I’m scheduled to give Julie a Dreamweaver tutorial, capped by dinner at the British restaurant in Frederick. (Yay! Cornish pasties! And Heinz puddings!)

I’ve been slowly plowing my way through all my old journals, gathering nuggets for my 25-year journal retrospective on this blog. Parts of the journal entries make me laugh, but for the most part I’m left cringing and feeling awful (which is one reason why it’s appropriate that two of these journal entries appear in the Cringe book). I won’t deny that I was heavy-handed with the melodramatic teen angst bullshit (I really knew how to spackle it on thickly), but at the core of the maelstrom was a very real case of clinical depression. I was just so, so sick, and I don’t think I fully realized until now—while reading each journal end to end—just how deeply the sickness ran. Obviously it didn’t completely obliterate me, because I’m still here. And I still have friends from that era, so the depression didn’t destroy those connections, although it came damn close.

It’s sad, really, because so much valuable time was lost, and I wonder how differently my life could’ve been during my formative years if I had sought treatment. That’s not to say that I never experienced any joy or had any happy memories, but life in general could have been more…shall we say robust...if I hadn’t been stuck in that depressive mire. I think of it as living in color versus living in black and white.

My journals too often give the impression that my life was an unbearable stretch of prolonged victimization. In reality, it was much closer to being a charmed life. Nothing is perfect; I certainly had some issues to deal with, such as my health problems and my parents’ unhappy marriage and subsequent split, but compared with what many other people go through, good lord, my life was like Leave it to Beaver. That’s one of the more insidious aspects of depression—it blots out the good around you, forcing you to fixate on the bad and genuinely believe that the bad is all that exists. It’s somewhat comparable to a total solar eclipse, in that you’re only able to see the faintest shimmer of the sun at the periphery of the darkness. On an intellectual level, especially if the eclipse is transitory, you recognize that the sun is, in fact, still there—just hidden. But if the eclipse goes on and on? After a while you start doubting the sun’s existence. And that’s how it is with depression: the darkness becomes reality and the light becomes myth.

I’ve been medicated nonstop for nearly 13 years now. I’m not delusional about its power; I know it hasn’t killed the monster—it just keeps it sedated. The medication hasn’t cut the tumor out of me and cauterized what remains (salting the earth, so to speak). It’s similar to those old WWII shells that are occasionally found buried and unexploded in back yards in Europe. This means that a relapse, whether I stay on medication or not, remains a very real threat. But for now I’m content to take my little pink pill each night and offer up a hallelujah of gratitude for the gift it gives me: an end to the eclipse and the ability to recognize the good in my life—and acknowledge that it was there all along.


song heard most recently before posting:
#1 Crush—Garbage