A little melancholy today. Church lifted my spirits for awhile, but now I'm back home and I have work to do and I'd rather take a long, long nap.
I think I've identified the problem, though. It was a hypothesis I hadn't thought to test out last year; I was in my stubborn I-do-it-mySELF mode (I think I've been in that mode since I was about nine) and had determined to see things through MY way. Until impending psychological annihilation forced my hand, I planned never, ever to live with another human being until I married.
Impending psychological annihilation did force my hand -- I believe in free will; I could certainly have chosen to stay, and I definitely chose to return home; but God most certainly stacks the deck to guide us when we're too hardheaded to listen -- and I returned home consumed with the bitterness of resumed dependence. I meant always to live alone. I meant to be fine alone. I failed.
But instead of drudgery I found freedom, and the hypothesis I had found interesting -- that depression is worst when a person is alone -- proved itself true. Since I took up residence once again with my parents, the void has retreated considerably. Now, lest you, dear readers, think that because of this I plan to live with Mommy and Daddy forever, I will qualify by saying that I don't think it's just my parents that have helped; it's the companionship, period. And not even constant being in each other's presence; it helps simply knowing there's someone else in the house, even if I'm up in my room grading essays.
I read a study once a few years back that showed that married people who suffer from clinical depression, even if the marriage is a bad one, suffer less than single people with clinical depression. The rates of alcoholism, substance abuse and suicide were much higher among depressives who lived alone. Since I firmly believe that depression is fundamentally centered around disconnect and isolation, it stands to reason, to me, that not only marriage, but any kind of living arrangement that involves more than one person under the same roof is helpful.
Which means that, when I leave my parents' place, I'd better have a roommate wherever I'm going. Because company is such a relief. Looking back, I notice that my depression became completely unmanageable only in The State of Denmark, where, for the first time in my life, I lived utterly and totally alone. Granted, in the Ivory Tower I had no actual roommate, but I saw a good deal of my neighbors, several times a day, and I knew that every day I would talk to someone who wasn't me (another reason for smoking, back then; I always saw my neighbors on the porch). And even when I wasn't interacting with them, their presences filled the house, sometimes irritatingly so; all the same, life and vitality and otherness was at work all around me, and the void was much, much less potent, almost nonexistant.
Meg said last weekend that she wished she and Phillip had an extra room in their house, so that I could have gone to live with them for awhile after everything became too much. And I would have loved that. Memorial Day weekend was such a wonderful time because I was somewhere where I completely belonged. Whether dressed to the nines, bleary-eyed and bed-headed and jammified, or taking forever to cross over from the latter to the former, I was perfectly at home. Helping out around the house, doing a little bit with the cooking, participating in watching Josie (who's so BIG and CUTE -- I'm going to be the Cool Aunt who always gives her awesome and annoying toys, I've decided, starting with my next visit) was all just as satisfying as lounging around in the backyard tanning and talking with Meg. I remember thinking, as I scrubbed the dishes, This must be what extended family used to be, with multiple generations living in the same house. And in some ways it was a lot more peaceful, in all its crowdedness and differing temperaments, than it ever was in The State of Denmark, alone.
All of this stems from my parents' absence on a camping trip this weekend. Yesterday was wonderful, even luxuriant, as I rose in an empty house and prepared my coffee and drifted around from room to room doing exactly as I pleased. Working alone in the garage, journaling, talking to myself -- everything was peaceful and delightful, because I love my solitude. Until about five o'clock, when I thought of the long evening stretching ahead of me and felt a roll of dread twist in my stomach.
Evenings are the worst. They always were. I will happily go the day without conversing with a single soul, but come eventide, I want company. Nothing really makes it better, and I didn't feel like going anywhere (and I received a last-minute party invite which I declined, so in stark honesty I did have options; but it wasn't the kind of crowd I wanted, and I would have had a hard time focusing on the present and on the people), so I did last night what I have done for a year and a half, and switched on the television while I graded essays.
And I don't think it was a coincidence that yesterday afternoon was the first time in a long, long while that I suddenly wanted a cigarette. It was only a fleeting thought, easily dismissed; but it was there. (I haven't attempted or desired to attempt to smoke in well over a month. I officially quit in October when I moved back to PA, though I had about one every month until the night I QUIT quit several months ago. I am delighted to say that I believe this habit is kicked. The last one I attempted tasted so horrible that I only made it through a couple of drags before the nausea hit and I put it out. I quit reluctantly, but baby, I quit.) Isolation fosters a whole slew of bad habits in a depressive person.
I'm glad my folks are coming back sometime this afternoon. I plan to listen to my music loudly while I arrange bookshelves until they return, and to enjoy my daytime alone. But I'm glad I won't be by myself in the evening. The time wasn't torturous or anything, and I didn't find myself slipping suddenly back into a bad state; it couldn't even qualify as a rough patch. It was more like the little ripples of water in the cup on the dashboard from Jurassic Park: a little signifier of worse things to come, given time and an unchanged state of affairs.
A good part of me is resentful: Isn't there some way to beat this thing on my own? Another part of me is laughing at my resentful self and saying, Of course not, silly; what did you expect? God designed us to live in community. The practical part of me is shrugging and saying, This is how it goes. Run with it. No point in resisting what's true, even if it does strike a blow to your pride. Life, and life to the fullest, is more important than keeping your pride intact. And anyway, it's not like you're depending on other people to make you better; just having them around gives you the buffer you need to deal with the devilfish on your own. They don't even need to do anything. So you're not being needy and you don't need to be ashamed of needing companionship. That's how you're built, after all.
And I have to say, it's nice not to have the void yawning at my heels all the time. Living with other people is the way life is supposed to be, and since I'm single, I must -- and get to -- be a little more creative in how I achieve that communal living. We'll see what the future has in store.
Still, a little melancholy today.
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