To a hopeless depressive

I remember when it first dawned on me that I was not just merely perpetually sad, negative, unmotivated or for the most part indifferent, but, that I was actually suffering from depression. At the time, I was only old enough to sprout three or four strings of hair on my chin, and I had not collected enough ‘ule dem’ stories to regal my peers with for more than 5 minutes.

 

I remember that day with dread. It is a dark memory, and every time I look back upon it, I feel as if I am using a hot knife to peel away the scars around a large wound. However, I can neither remember what triggered it, nor bring to surface the specific flavours of emotions that plagued me before that moment. However, the general narrative is coloured by imperceptive teachers here and a loving parent there, a witchcraft story here and and a friendless period there: too much to all be bound into a single tale. After all, our darkest nightmares like our sweetest dreams are never easily forgot’, and cannot be easily narrated.

 

I remember the great emptiness in my chest, a cavity so real that I could feel it expand whenever I exhaled too deeply. It felt like something had been curved out from within me, and I had just recently become aware of it. I remember the paralysis of thought, catching myself staring out into the distance with not a single voice in my head: many minutes were stolen from me in this fashion. My mind that I once could not rein had now decayed into one that could not be stirred. I recall sitting in front of many exam papers unafraid of the consequences of failure: I never bothered to read for them, and somehow, I never even bothered to fail them. Somehow, despite sparring with the finest of my peers in deep mental waters, I floated through school as an average, unremarkable student, visiting the newspaper’s front page on only one occasion, and reknown only amongst the few that witnessed my mind at its best moments. I remember dangling my feet nonchalantly over lofty ledges, unafraid of death, and crossing roads with my eyes glued to the tarmac, unbothered by the oncoming traffic. I recall abandoning the spirited dancehall music that I once so dearly loved — having been introduced to it by my dear big brother, and whose lyrics I even memorized and sang quite terribly to the annoyance of my classmates — and slowly sinking into the mellow world of melodic dubstep, that to your ears would sound like the darkest dirges of the 30^th century. And also, on many occasions, I remember looking within myself for something to live for, and finding nothing.

But, after the winds of space and time tossed me about (for over a decade), I eventually climbed out of that dark place, somewhat by both will and chance, and now I feel somewhat alive. There is now something within my chest. I can also hear a little voice chattering, albeit quietly, within my mind, and I no longer let myself wonder too close to any precipitous ledge. However, I am not quite the healed depressive, but merely a convalescent one. For me, that is enough, and that is why I am writing this.

 

Today, both the medical world and the rest of the world view depression as a malady. The depressed soul is regarded as a deviation from the norm, a distortion of the mind, having strayed from the ‘correct’ path of pure happiness. When you tell the society that you are depressed, they rush to you with the idea that there is something within you that they must cure or kill for you to become well. And it is then that, to your chagrin, you would know that depression is accompanied by its own stigma! Your list of friends would quickly dwindle at the slip of this secret. Depression, after all, is but a type of insanity, they say, and hence our psychiatric hospitals are full of as many depressed people as the American Penitentiary System is full of innocent stoners. There’s a problem here,  a big one.

 

As fate would have it, depression did not just take away things from me, it also gave me a few things in recompense. Somehow, it was when as I agonized over my own suffering that my eyes truly became opened to the suffering of others. I saw how the world had turned its back against me, and it is then that I understood how people feel when the world turns its back against them. This world that is obsessed with perpetual happiness and the delusion of heaven does not accept a sadness that cannot be willed away: it rejects it and spits on its face.

 

Depression also allowed me to think critically about my world view. I had been an atheist for many years at the time, but I hadn’t carefully considered what Nietzsche meant when he proclaimed:

 

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?”

 

I finally wondered, as I drowned in my deep sadness, whence shall come my happiness, now that I had unshackled myself from illusion? I wondered whether for all these years since my awakening I had merely replaced one illusion with another: the blind pursuit of beauty in all its forms, in art, music, science and literature, a religion of my own design. I wondered whether I was really sick as the world seemed to suggest, or whether it was the society that was sick and unable to see the world clearly behind the delusions they oh so loved and perpetuated. I started to see that my negative thoughts were a more accurate representation of reality than the diluted nonsense that the society repeated to itself, over and over again, as if within its heart lay a sliver of doubt that it was trying to drown. Yes, the world is fucked up. Yes, the world owes us nothing. Yes, more people fail than they succeed, in everything they attempt. Yes, I am not the smartest person in my village, nor the wealthiest, and I probably never shall be. And yes, hard work does not pay, especially in a corrupt and capitalistic world, at least not as much as shrewdness and corruption itself. Yes, I may amount to nothing, and die unmissed and unremembered. All these negative thoughts that the society would call me sick for were, upon close inspection, statistically and empirically valid! In the darkness of depression my persistent illusions perished, from the illusion of optimism, the illusion of control, illusion of superiority, etc…to the illusion of salvation. The problem was, actually, I just had no way of dealing with the emotions that my revelations would bring, and hence these truths compounded the agony that was caused by the disrupted orchestra of neurotransmitters in my brain, which was the real cause of my depression.

 

It is depression that eventually allowed me to realize the truth in the words of Arthur Schopenhauer, whose rejoinder was that life is not a stream of happiness that is intermittently interrupted by suffering, but that life is endless suffering and endless mourning, interrupted by bouts of bliss. ‘It is bad today,’ he said, ‘and it will be worse tomorrow …’ Schopenhauer was not alone in proclaiming this truth: Martin Heidegger, a philosopher of equal rank, once wrote that “If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life – and only then will I be free to become myself.” He was aware that our minds create illusions to protect themselves from facing the futility and meaninglessness of our existence. To dispel these illusions is the first step towards living an authentic life.

 

Depression, therefore, despite its most vile effects, offers a clearer window with which to view the world. Thus, when one manages to mitigate its effects, she is not just left wounded by an affliction that she cannot understand, but she is also healed from a greater illness that she did not know she possessed. This idea of depression being partly beneficial has been tested scientifically, and it has held up to scrutiny. When depressed students were compared against non-depressed students in an illusion of control test (where you press a button, observe whether a green light turns on or not, and then you are assessed on how much control you think you had over the light turning on or not), the depressed students were more the wiser, out-performing their peers.  Many such studies have been conducted since, and the hypothesis has lived on unpertubed.

 

There seems to be an evolutionary advantage to depression, evinced by the advantages that it confers in spite of the often harrowing trade-offs. In addition to aiding the mind in its analytical thinking, it also deepens ones concentration in some cases (I have composed my most florid pieces in my lowest moments, and I am sure that I am not alone in this regard). The feeling of depression often heightens when your mind is in active confrontation with the reality of its own existence, and it is at this moment that the brain is deeply unsettled with the truths that it has started to find. Unfortunately, quite inevitably, when the mind has found out that the pursuit of happiness is meaningless, depression reaches its peak, and it is here that many of us see its most lethal effect: suicide. This is why we convalescent depressives must stick with our fellows and help each other, to steer them away from the ultimate trap, and help them forge a better mental life for themselves.

 

For those lingering at the edge, allow me to offer unsolicited advice that I have recently offered to a sweet friend of mine. Even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or experience this mysterious world with you, I choose to reach out to you because your misery resembles mine. When I was in the hole a few years ago I also wished for help. I punched many walls, groaned my heart out into pillows, walked my feet to exhaustion, and starved myself hoping to purge myself of this vile illness, hoping that someone would see my futile cries and pull me out of the hole or teach me how to climb out of it. Those to whom I reached out did offer their remorse, but unfortunately, no one really grabbed me by the hand and yanked me out of that deep, dark hole that was consuming me from within.

I had sank deeper into it as soon as I entered campus and although my star had been shining bright till then, it was immediately extinguished by the turmoil and anguish that started stirring within me. By the end of the first year in campus, I had fallen from being an A student to a D student, lost almost all my close friends (it was entirely my fault, I pushed them away, I couldn’t stand them anymore), lost my sense of purpose (I no longer saw myself as a key character in the narrative of my own life), and I saw no reason to live. In my formative years, I used to be the most passionate student my teachers had seen in most of my classes, and I had been growing into perhaps the most animated and annoying intellectual some of my friends had come across, and amongst my acquaintances my reputation for a fierce love of science preceded me, but in mere months, I withered into a quiet, unexcitable, indifferent soul who couldn’t remember anyone’s name, let alone remember to eat. I became lost in a cold, timeless, unwanting world that had no use for me.

I remember falling in love with the long dead feminist writer and genius Virginia Wolf who like I, suffered severe mood swings and a madness that stirred her into calamity. In her suicide note to her husband, she wrote:

“Dearest,
I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight it any longer…”

 

It was not long before a psychiatrist offered me some pills, and despite my distaste for such medications, I took them, until I could take them no more.

Since then, I faked as much as I could that I was okay, this was in order to hide my struggle from my parent, while attempting every single remedy at my disposal that the internet suggested. If it was online, I tried it. From cannabis to music therapy, from yoga to gym, from cognitive behavioural therapy to visual/colour therapy. I did not attempt suicide at the time, although I must confess I considered it multiple times.

What I hope most of all is that you understand that Virginia Wolf was wrong: these violent sensations must not have violent ends, these turbulent feelings are merely the products of a turbulent brain…they are impermanent, and are not immutable. You can fight your way through, change them, step by step, and emerge out of the darkness.

Fearing that I may spiral and lose everything in my life, I decided to save myself. I said fuck it, and I immersed myself into a relentless search for a ‘medicant’ with the ferocity of a man with nothing to lose, and yes, I did settle on a few key strategies that I can guarantee that even if I do not know who you are, they may have the best chance to keep the dark clouds away.

1. If you have not yet sought professional help, do it ASAP. Don’t assume that it won’t help. You never know, maybe a scientist has already slaved for humanity on the specific type of struggle that you possess, and he may have bequeathed us with a remedy that is just a doctor’s visit away. But I am aware that not all of us can afford it, and not all of us may benefit from it. The world is indeed unfair, but what can we do?

2. To heal the mind, you must first heal the body. If you find yourself hiding from the sun, grab yourself by the collar and drag yourself out. Feel the warmth of the sun’s rays and cast yourself out into this beautiful world. The darkness and solitude makes the depression worse, don’t stay in it for too long. In addition, you must exert the body…exercise! The science on this has been done: naturally, people who exercise start eating better, and while filling your mind with ‘feel good’ hormones, the exercise also distracts you from the agonies of the moment. Go for a run if you can, visit a gym and commit to a regimen, go to Africa Yoga Project in Westie and do some free yoga on Saturday…whatever it is that you can do, do it, just don’t lie down when the sun still hoovers above.

3. Meditate, and I don’t mean the third eye crap people talk about out here. Download the “Waking Up” app by Sam Harris (if you don’t know him, google him). If the app asks for money and you can’t afford the monthly fees, write to the support email telling them you can’t afford it: they’ll give you free access for a whole year. Let one of the best neuroscientists and one of the best rational minds out there teach you how to control your mind: you’ll be surprised what you can learn about yourself when you just sit down and examine your own mind.

4. Empty your soul into a patient ear…although one may feel abandoned by the world, no one is truly alone. There is always a kindred soul that the universe may have brought to us long ago, one that we can trust. Reach out to them and expunge yourself of those terrible thoughts. If there is no one for you for now, hold a pen in your hand and press the thoughts that plague your mind upon a blank page. You have closed yourself in long enough, it is time for you to try something new. Open yourself up to someone, to something. Just open up and let it out. A single rose can be your garden; a single book, your library; and a single friend, your world. Ultimately the most beautiful gift of companionship is conversation. Use it and use it well. It works like a charm.

5. Seek the beauty lurking in the world that your mind convinced you lurks no more. Music is the shorthand of emotion: find some new music for you to love, and immerse yourself in it. Tag along with your friend to that play at Goethe and laugh your heart out. Ask a sensual nerd to recommend a beautiful book (My personal favourite: A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. It was written after my heart: it is as witty as it is beautiful, a timeless work of art that curved my lips with all emotions that have ever plagued man, dispelling at once the stern sadness that had claimed my cheeks for far too long.)

6. Last but not least, stay away from social media. Yes, this is ironical, because this is where we may have met. I do not mean that you must abandon it completely, no, but that you should use it sparingly. For reasons best explained by the authors of a research paper published a year or so ago, Facebook and Instagram have an uncanny positive correlation with depression in young adults, and many who deleted facebook during the #deletefacebook wave last year reported an improvement in their mental health. Give social media less than an hour a day, it deserves much less but no more, unless you use it as a source of income. Spend your time on other wonderful things instead.

I have done all these things, and continue doing them albeit semi-consistently, and so far, I can proudly say that I have climbed out of the hole, although I still linger around it. I have rekindled my fires and achieved some of the dreams that I once held before I fell ‘sick’. I know that depression quenches all the drive within us, but you must be strong. Depression is impermanent, take one step at a time and you will emerge not scarred but healed. Slowly but surely, you too will overcome.
Yours,

V