Depression

Read to the end for a new feature in the cool dude zone

Very quickly before we begin — I am never going to charge for my Substack, but I am really enjoying writing on here, and I feel like if I can get a couple hundred subscribers, I might be able to start doing it more regularly (also I am not employed full-time at the moment so every little bit helps). If you feel like contributing, I would really appreciate it. If not, I still appreciate you reading. Thanks.

Last week, I had lunch with someone I’ve known for half my life, someone I would say knows me about as well as anyone in the world. We talked about how we were doing, what we were up to, children, the future, and unsurprisingly, when it came to how I was doing, I reflexively said I was doing badly, struggling to keep it together.

Now as this person has known me for half my life, this probably came as no surprise to them, but their response shocked me. They looked at me with a mix of compassion and frustration in their eyes and said “You know, you’re going to die some day. This is it. This is the one life we get, and we have to choose to be happy.”

This was a perfectly innocuous statement, meant as encouragement or at least as a challenge to my bleak perspective. I certainly don’t begrudge them for saying it. But receiving it felt like sustaining a critical injury. It wounded me. I feel the pain of that statement with every breath. It has opened up this internal struggle of personal responsibility vs. determinism vs. fatalism. It has me tied up in knots, and I just can’t figure out how to feel about it.

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The irony is that just hearing this statement is that it has sidelined me to the point where I can’t get out of bed. It’s an indictment of me to my very core, a refutation of the most essential ideas I have of myself. My initial response was to think “well that’s just a facile misunderstanding of me as a person and of depression in general.” But it is hard not to blame myself for my self-esteem or my motivation or my depression when it is clear that others are blaming me for them.

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This might sound weird, but VHS box art has an outsized influence on the symbology of my interior world, especially horror movie box art. The cover of Carrie — one half a portrait of Carrie White beaming as the prom queen, the other half her covered in blood, stiff with rage and lit sinisterly from below — still flashes through my mind when I begin losing my composure. And as ridiculous as it sounds, the cover of the Ken Russell movie Gothic (itself based on The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli), is my brain’s illustration of depression.

There it is — depression in its corporeal form — a razorclawed little goblin standing on my chest as lay immobile underneath it. It glowers oppressively over me, and makes movement in any direction impossible.

But there’s a new dimension to it that I’m just beginning to realize. Like it’s namesake, it’s a nightmare, it’s spectral. I can feel it mitigating all my joy and amplifying all my woes, but to everyone else, it’s invisible. All they see is the weight in imposes on me. It’s one thing to say to someone “I suffer from clinical depression.” But unless they have suffered through depression themselves (and even that is no guarantee), there is a degree to which people will look at me and say “what is wrong with you? Why can’t you just be happy?”

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I am starting to wonder how many people I’ve lost, or pushed away, or otherwise exhausted with my relentless negativity. How much of this I can blame on depression and how much of this is just me being unpleasant to be around. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I just be happy?

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I brought this up in a group chat, and one of my friends talked to me about the idea of “priming,” this idea where if we consciously expose ourselves to positive stimuli, our brains will be quicker to process similarly stimuli when we encounter it in the world. Basically, priming ourselves to receive positivity. Practicing gratitude, visualizing happiness, and imagining ourselves “sending energy” into the world primes us to get those things in return.

All of that sounds a bit too much like The Secret for my tastes. If you don’t know The Secret, it’s a book/movie about how putting positive energy into the world and visualizing what you want will make those things appear in your life. There’s a lot of weird woo-woo tacked on about energy frequencies and the cosmos, but that’s the gist of it. If you think worry about success or career, you will always be unsuccessful. If you believe you are a success, it will come to you.

Thinking about it logically, I lead a fucking charmed life. I get to write and make radio for a living. It’s the best, and I’m lucky to do it, and it’s certainly not because I wake up every morning and repeat to myself “I am an incredibly powerful salesperson that continually climbs higher and higher up the ladder of success.” But in the problem of my own personal misery and myopia, I and I alone am the common denominator. And priming, the secret, all that crap calls back uncomfortably to this idea that it’s not some problem inherent to the chemistry of my brain, but a matter of me having a cracked perspective.

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My favorite movie is a weird, dark comedy called Little Murders. It’s a love story about a deeply unhappy man (he gets accused of being a nihilist but calls himself an “apathist”) falling in love with an unwavering optimist. Early in the story, the optimist delivers this monologue:

Do you know how I wake up every morning of my life? With a smile on my face. And for the rest of the day I come up against an unending series of…of challenges to wipe that smile off my face. The breather calls. Ex-boyfriends call to tell me they're getting married. Someone tries to break into the apartment while I'm getting dressed. There's a drunk asleep in the elevator. Three minutes after I'm out in the street, my camel coat turns brown. The subway stalls. A man standing next to me presses his body against mine. The up elevator jams. Rumors start buzzing around the office that we're about to be automated. The down elevator jams. The air on Lexington Avenue is... is purple. And all the taxis are off duty. A man on the bus tries to pick me up. Another man follows me home. I walk in the door, and the breather's on the phone. Isn't that enough to wipe the smile off anybody's face? Well, it doesn't wipe it off mine. Because for every bad thing, there are two... No, four good things.

Later in the film, the optimist’s father calls back to her monologue with one of his own.

[Sighs] You know how I get through the day, Alfred? In planned segments. I get up in the morning and I think... okay, a sniper didn't get me for breakfast. Let's see if I can take my morning walk without being mugged. Okay, I finished my walk. Let's see if I can make it back home without getting a brick... dropped on my head from the top of a building. Okay, I'm safe in the lobby. Let's see if I can make it up in the elevator without getting a knife in my ribs. Okay, I made it to the hall. Let's see if I can walk in and not find burglars in the hallway. Okay, I made it to the hall. Let's see if I can walk into my living room... and not find the rest of my family dead.

Can you guess which one resonates more deeply with me?

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I have had people in the past thank me for writing candidly about my mental health, in ways that make them feel less alone. I’m grateful that I am able to connect with people in the way, and it in turn makes me feel less alone. I have, however, spent the last week wondering if I’m actually just giving them permission to live in anxiety and sadness, instead of finding their way out of their pain. Is that what I’ve done? Is that what I’m doing for myself?

Somehow the idea that if I could just change my perspective my life would be incredibly different is infinitely more painful than the feeling that this is chemically pre-determined and only partially in my hands. I guiltily find comfort in depression being bigger than me.

What is wrong with me?

Why can’t I just be happy?

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New Cool Dude Zone Feature Incoming

Starting this week, I’m going to update a Spotify playlist once a week with music I’ve been listening to. I think I have really good taste in music, so honestly, you might enjoy it. It’s called the Weekly Jambox. Follow it here.