get it done

This week's itinerary daunts me a bit:

Tuesday: Attend Chrism Mass at the seat of the diocese in Kalamazoo. Return home after eleven o'clock p.m.

Wednesday: Tutor.

Thursday: Cantor the Holy Thursday service at church. (Squeeze time in for practice, which has not yet occurred, between Wednesday evening and Thursday evening.)

Friday: Sing with the choir in the Good Friday service at 1 p.m.

Saturday: Rehearse for Easter Vigil Confirmation in the morning. Easter Vigil at 8:00 p.m.

Sunday: Sing with the choir for Sunday Mass. Celebration to follow.

* * *

All of these things are wonderful and good. There are just a lot of them to accomplish at an extraordinarily fast pace. Meanwhile other things need to happen, like dishes and laundry and housecleaning and assuring my mother that I'm neither mad at her nor dead, quite a task considering I've been in a Godzilla mood with no rational cause for the past three weeks and haven't wanted to bite off the heads of my family members.

I've been working on the housecleaning stuff when I get up in the morning, and on my lunch breaks (I love love LOVE living three minutes from work). Today's lunch break featured the monumental task of rebagging four months' worth of trash which had been sitting in the snow next to the garage until the snow melted, and looked generally...well, trashy. Especially because the Critters had had a field day with my leavings; but, anticipating that, I purchased disposable vinyl gloves along with a box of thirty-gallon trash bags at the local grocery store before heading home to get to work. Best idea ever, by the way.

The thing about depression, which hammered me into the ground from October through December, and from which I've been in gradual recovery ever since, is that the aftermath is fairly matter-of-fact and cheerful. As I grabbed up handfuls of disgusting sopping-wet nastiness and stuffed them into the new bags, I looked it all over and said, This is just the result of your temporary disablement. Mea culpa. Get it done.

Returning to a state of having the energy to do things again is invigorating. I trash-hunted, rebagged chewed-up kitchen bags with their guts strewn all over, hauled sixteen fresh bags of trash to the roadside (a good forty yards -- my driveway is long), then stuffed what appears to be the last tenants' scary swimming pool into the actual garbage bin and dragged that up next to the bags, in under forty minutes. I had to do it at lunch because I'm tutoring tonight, the trash goes out very early tomorrow morning, and I had no desire to touch icky pulpy things in the dark, vinyl gloves or no.

And when I finished, I felt satisfied. Not proud exactly -- I certainly wasn't proud of having waited so long to set up the trash service and lived like a skunk in the meantime -- but glad to return to a state where I can perform my normal duties and then some -- not only fulfill my ordinary obligations, but clean up in the wake of my zombie state and discard the remaining evidence that I'd sunk humiliatingly low. Everything was clean. Incredible. Satisfying.

Even on medication, depression is like riding a wave. Good meds keep you at a normally functioning level most of the time, and I'm a pretty functional person to begin with, particularly where others' expectations are concerned -- I may avoid my bills (although I haven't since the start of this year, a lovely new discipline) and let my house turn into a landfill, but I show up at work and do my job competently. But the pills, as Dr. Asshole once told me, don't stop the occasional bad stretch from yanking the rug out from under you. It's just one of those things to be endured and dealt with to the best of one's capability.

I don't make it easy for myself. When times get tough, I don't call out for help. I don't even tell people what's going on. I hole up and disappear, and reemerge once the worst of it has passed. This is a stupid way to deal, but it's one born of many years of conviction that no one can do anything (so why trouble them), the fear of showing people what I'm really like when I'm under the wave and causing them to despise or hate or get sick of me, a nausea at the self-absorption characteristic of that phase in the cycle which is bound to show through if I talk to anyone, and a natural and instinctive introversion which turns to isolation for healing.

It's less of a turtle drawing into its shell and more of a hibernation. At this stage in the game I'm open to growth, but still not convinced that talking about it while I'm going through it will do anything profitable. There may be a trigger, but there's seldom a proactive solution. This last time around, for example, I believe was triggered by the suddenness of a move that I didn't want to make: While I hated the environment surrounding my apartment, I loved the apartment itself, and I had to pack up and leave it in ten days' time, which included, in addition to the basic stresses of moving (exacerbated by the short time frame), the necessity of setting up new utilities accounts and getting all those pragmatic ducks in an orderly row. I was overwhelmed, distressed, sad, angry, out of place, and generally miserable.

The only answer for that, though, was time. Time always heals, and so I usually wait out the bad spell and it eventually dissipates. What good would talking about my feelings do? When it's at its worst, I don't feel anything at all beyond a dull psychological pain, so there's nothing to talk about; and if I try, my brain grinds to a halt and my tongue can't get anything out. So a response to the question What's Wrong is a shrug. It simply takes time.

I will, however, notify my parents and sister and close friends that I'm going into hibernation phase, so that at least they know what's going on.

I am glad to be getting back on my feet. My house is the cleanest it's ever been, my bills up to date, my bank account managed, my job productive and efficient, and my attitude improved. I feel like I can uncurl again and start to breathe the air. I can mop up after the mess I left behind and start over again.

Yes, depression can be crippling. Obviously I'd rather not have it; but on the other hand it comes with its compensations. The waking up part is lovely, and I have an enormous appreciation for the Normal Days. I've also seen progress in myself this last year (particularly these last months -- the recovery phase is like those first few minutes when you wake up in the morning and lie in bed, awake but barely conscious, only stretched out over days or weeks) in how I cope -- paying my bills regularly, attending to my finances, budgeting, keeping up the house even when I don't give a damn. I'm satisfied with that, hopeful that I will continue to grow through it as the years go by.

There seems to be a balance between accepting it (or being resigned to it) -- a sort of "Why should the pot look to the potter and say, 'Why did you make me this way?'" attitude -- and seeking to, if not overcome it, at least master it. Depression runs strongly through both sides of my family; I got nailed by the genetic code, and my temperament seems to incorporate depression easily. But also running through my DNA is a strong stubborn streak and an upbeat cheerfulness that help combat it. Not to mention my faith. So while there's no point in denying the condition or railing against the heavens for having it, there's also tremendous room for growing strength and greater maturity in dealing with it both internally and socially.

I really only meant to talk about my monumental feat of hauling trash while on lunch break. But one thing leads to another, so here you are. People don't talk about depression much, whether because there's a huge social stigma still attached to it, or because a lot of people with depression refuse to take meds for it and get crazier and crazier, thus reinforcing the stigma. But it bears discussion, because a lot of people have it, and there are still enormous misunderstandings about the condition running amok through the general populace, the Christian evangelical populace particularly (not my parents, nor their friends; but plenty of others).

I sometimes worry that when I talk about it (not in the Hibernation Phase, when I can't talk about it) it's going to render me single for the rest of my life; but plenty of crazies are happily or unhappily hitched, so whatever. And I'm too old and too single to worry about the consequences of disclosure -- much. Besides, plenty of depression sufferers are fairly normal, and there are lots of us out there.

People who've never been afflicted with clinical depression appear to think that those afflicted with depression are sad, and need to focus on what they should be thankful for, and all the good things in their lives. Actually this makes the bad stretch worse because it doesn't make you feel better, and then you feel like a pretty bad person for not being thankful when your life is so much better, objectively, than a refugee's in Africa. Depression actually feels less like sadness and more like a static roar of nothing. It's the void that's so awful. Yes, there's a feeling of pain with it, but it dulls you to emotion. You don't care about anything. You can't do anything, and even when you can't do anything and don't do anything but sit in a chair and stare at the wall or the television, you still feel exhausted and bored. Nothing has savor. Nothing sounds interesting or attractive or fun. Ordinary duties like laundry and dishes become impossible.

And it can have absolutely nothing to do with the objective circumstances of your life. A well-meaning friend once said to me, "What do you have to be depressed about? You're beautiful, you're young, you have a great job and good friends!" I told her, "It doesn't matter whether or not I have anything to be depressed about. I'm just depressed. There's a chemical imbalance in my brain that makes it impossible for me to feel happy sometimes."

A simplification. Because again, it's not about happiness. I can intellectually be satisfied with my life, but get no joy of it. It's a little to do with the absence of happiness; more to do with the absence of joy. Happiness I can live without. I do for long periods of time, and have for most of my life. But the inability to experience joy, which gets a person through the daunting, difficult, or painful circumstances that life hands you sometimes, is really what's crippling, is really what causes the exhaustion and inertness.

Medication helps. Enormously. Not that joy is a chemical response; but it brings your chemical levels closer to what non-depressive people have. It aids you in functioning. You might not experience joy for awhile even then, but at least you can get through your daily tasks with a little energy.

And then the cycle resets itself, and you're okay for awhile, or for a very long time, and the next time around, if you work at it, might not be as bad. It has seasons, like the weather. I'm coming into my spring, and I feel pretty eager for it. Joy comes in flashes, and I'm looking forward to the sun. And you can bet I'll get a good dark suntan of the great things, for as long as they last, this time around, to try to build up my resistance for the next hibernation. And clean the house like nobody's business in the meantime.