Eyre Lines

Yesterday morning, my Live Journal feed was adorned with “21 comics that capture the frustrations of depression”, which I strongly recommend (if you get here via facebook, you’ll already have seen me link to it). If you’re severely depressed at the moment, you’ll maybe get as far as “Well, that’s something like how it is” and shrug. Four months ago, I’d have shrugged. Today, however, I recognised what it was like wonderfully portrayed there and felt a huge sadness, and also joy at NOT FEELING LIKE THAT ANY MORE.

And my mind went back to sitting with a couple of counsellors from MIND back in 2008, telling them my life story (as they’d asked). One of them said, when I paused, “That’s so SAD”, and I noticed that tears were running down her cheeks. I couldn’t remotely understand how it was that she found it sad; I was just dispassionately telling them what they’d asked for. I can recall people saying after I shared much the same story at a twelve step meeting that I was “courageous” or “brave” to be so truthful and open. Not a bit of it. I just didn’t have an emotional dog in the fight any more; there was no point in not telling as nearly as I could exactly how it was.

I think we’re inclined to confuse depression with an emotional state – I certainly used to, and there’s a voice at the back of my head which still tells me that it is, with the corollary that “you can or at least should control your emotions”. As several of the cartoons point out, depression isn’t controllable like that. You can’t “think your way out of it”; it isn’t a matter of controlling the impulse to look on the black side of everything.

No, I think depression isn’t an emotion, it’s where emotions go to die.

Of course there wasn’t much about my emotions in my life story as told then, because by the time I was doing the telling, emotions were limited to shadows of despair, frustration and anger. Those were, I think, the last to go, and I suppose I sort of welcomed their demise, as those three were the ones which could well have meant that I actually did something to change the situation. Something terminal. That did come very close to happening a number of times, and a couple of those I shouldn’t have survived.

I can sit here today and feel incredibly grateful that, by some miracle, I did survive, as life is emphatically worth living – it isn’t a bed of roses, but it’s now either good or it’s stimulating, and sometimes both. However, that’s eclipsed by how grateful I feel that I’m NOT in the situation described by those cartoons any more. I have no idea why that happened. It could have been new medication (very unlikely after one dose of a slow buildup antidepressant), it could have been a placebo effect, it could have been six and a half years trying to stick to a twelve step programme, it could have been the answer to prayer. Or it could have been “just one of those things”. So I don’t know where the gratitude should be directed, but in order not to miss out, I thank God, my doctor, the pharmaceutical industry, Bill W and Dr. Bob and, of course, chance.

I suspect that my reaction to reading the comic strips this time was actually a normal one (as, probably, was the reaction of the two Mind counsellors hearing my story). So this is what “normal” feels like? Well, normal is pretty damn good. Normal I can work with. I did get two weeks of an unbelievable high following the depression going, and that was great, and I could probably live off the memory of it for quite a while (with Elbow singing “one day a year like this will see me right” in the back of my head) but I’m not sure my constitution is equipped for radical highs any more, if it ever was. It looks as if things have arrived at a sort of plateau, and taking the image of one of the cartoons, reasonably priced drinks and snacks do seem to be served (cue another cup of tea!). That, for the moment, is OK. Indeed, it’s more than OK, it is really just fine (and not in the sense of the acronym for f’d up, insecure, neurotic, emotional). Normal is a lot better than we give it credit for.

Last Thursday evening saw me at a study group, considering the topic of “Humility”. I wasn’t sure I could make much of a contribution there, once someone pointed out that humility was not to be confused with low self-esteem. My own self-esteem has been somewhere through the floor for so long that I’m likely still to be struggling to work out what actual humility rather than abject self-effacement looks like.

I’m not even sure what humility actually is. Phil. 2:3 says (NIV) “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves”. Clearly it isn’t the crippling lack of self esteem which says EVERYONE is better than you – at everything, though “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” might give some hope (assuming, for a moment, that depression allows hope!).

This passage doesn’t seem to be quite consistent with the second Great Commandment, either, “love your neighbour as yourself”; surely it is actually saying “love your neighbour better than yourself”. Perhaps “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend” would qualify.

It isn’t really practical to consider someone better than you at something in which you are skilled and they aren’t, and it’s also dishonest. On the other hand, it definitely isn’t “humble” to consider yourself always right even in an area in which you’re an expert.

So, perhaps what we see here is a form of “affirmative action”. The aiming point should, perhaps, be a balanced assessment of yourself and of others, never failing to recognise that everyone has some unique worth, everyone has abilities and above all everyone has experience which you don’t have; to value every human being for what they are, a wonderful, complex and interesting individual, but in order to get there the natural tendency to put self first has to be overcome.

It’s a lot easier seeing people this way if you’re in a twelve step programme, and are used to listening to other people’s “shares” of their own experience, strength and hope, and finding points which you can identify with. Frequently I’ve found that someone else’s life story can reveal to me something about my own, which I would probably never have known if they hadn’t held up to me a mirror of myself.

It’s also easier having reached a rock bottom of self esteem, which most long term twelve step members have done. If you have actually experienced “life at the bottom” and can keep its memory alive for yourself, it’s hard to feel superior.

I could actually pity those who haven’t got one of the many roots of twelve step programmes, and therefore don’t qualify to join one. I’m certainly grateful that I do qualify and do have such a programme!