That Gorilla, Depression

At 30-years-old I wanted to kill myself. Three decades. I felt three decades was a good run. It was enough time to try and find a career, settle into a home, spend days with a woman I loved who loved me back and maybe start a family. If I couldn’t find a purpose by the time I hit thirty, well, I gave it the ol’ college try.

Figuratively. I never went to college. I wanted to travel and I wanted to write and I didn’t see how I was going to find any kind of fulfillment sitting at a campus and sinking thousands of dollars into a course while a professor who would likely never remember my name told me to do what I felt I already knew to do. So, I spent zero years going to college. Couldn’t tell you a lick about it. But I’ve spent nearly my whole life battling depression in its various stages, amplified to suicidal intensity at its harshest thanks to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), so I’m going to write about that. I asked to write about it. Mental illness is misunderstood, misrepresented and often considered taboo. For those reasons, and because I don’t want to misinterpret or minimize another person’s struggles with these conditions, your source for this piece is going to be me.

Let’s start, then, by talking about SAD, the Understatement Acronym gold medal winner. I believe it’s the condition most accessible to the average Alaska resident. It’s a mood disorder with depressive symptoms like lethargy, lack of energy and a weight that is both crushing and incorporeal. It’s a little different from your run-of-the-mill Johnny Good Time depression in that A.) It’s seasonal––usually beginning near the end of fall and through the winter. Summertime sadness, as Lana Del Rey will tell you, is also real thing And B.) those with SAD usually have normal mental health otherwise.

Alaska has the highest population of SAD-affected people in the country. The state has long, unforgiving stretches of cold that so often skips the flesh just to gnaw at your bones. The dark can be nice, at first, with clear skies and countless stars floating like pearls in a black sea. But that sea begins to congeal after a while. Those ethereal waters turn into a suffocating burial shroud with little to no respite for those who have to spend the brief spurts of daylight in a classroom or office, sometimes with no windows.

Those things, those seemingly innocuous little details, can take a relentless toll on someone. According to a 2015 study by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), Alaska is tied for third with Kentucky and Missouri for alcoholism. According to the CDC and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Alaska is second only to Wyoming in suicide rates, and we’re still sitting at double the national average per capita. Alaska Natives are barely behind whites when you break that rate down to ethnicity, showing that it’s shockingly regionally affective.

And yet––while suicide is the tenth highest cause of death in the United States––it remains, in my experience, something very few people want to talk about. I get it. It’s terrifying. The idea that someone could feel so unbelievably distraught and devoid of hope, that someone could be in so much pain or anguish that the only suitable solution to them is a first-class ticket to whatever’s next––it’s almost unfathomable. It’s a situation that is so often met with rage, too. There is this idea that committing suicide is a selfish act. The act of taking one’s own life is deemed irresponsible and hurtful to those left behind, but while people are absolutely shocked and saddened and lessened by that loss, people don’t understand that someone who has reached that mental state are so overwhelmed with emotion and hurt and confusion that none of that even factors into it. Or if it does, it’s because that person feels that they’ve become a burden, or that their existence is hurting people and that they’re doing the right thing by leaving. It’s not true; It isn’t right. But it feels true, in that moment. It feels right. And that’s scary, because it’s hard to come back from that.

My godbrother shot himself in the parking lot of his home when I was a freshman in high school. He was young, a teenager himself, and it was a messy break-up that served as the last straw. His parents arrived ten minutes later. I’ve had two friends hang themselves since high school. I saw one mere weeks before–about a year after high school–when he invited me to a party at his home. He looked and sounded great. The other friend would spend long, hilarious hours in conversation with me online. He was always smiling. At his funeral, I had to tell his friends and family about how much he made me laugh, and then I spent the rest of the day wondering what to do with myself. My knee-jerk reaction is often, “Why, man? Why didn’t you reach out to somebody? Why didn’t you just fucking sleep on it? What made this time so different that you couldn’t weep it out over a spilled drink and a long night and just move on?” I still get it. I’ve stood on the corner of a sidewalk, mentally calculating which oncoming vehicle had the highest likelihood of making it quick. I’ve contemplated which ways would leave the least amount of mess.

This shit isn’t black and white, and it often comes out of nowhere.

The day will creep up on me sometimes. The sun comes out a little too bright, or the clouds hang over me like concrete blocks. All those fucking baby pictures on Facebook remind me that nobody loves me enough to settle down (keep in mind that nine out of ten days, this is literally the last thing on my mind). I start measuring other people’s jobs and living situations and successes against my own, and it gradually turns a simmer to a boil. Suddenly I’m wondering how self-published dinosaur erotica is paying some people’s mortgages. I’m looking at the novels I slaved for months over and thinking I’m lucky if the book sales keep my phone in service. Am I that talentless, I wonder. Am I so much of a hack that people would rather read about a woman fellating a velociraptor? Didn’t dinosaurs have cloacas? Jesus, it’s not even scientifically accurate.

To use a cliché, these little things build slowly, but surely into something unmanageable, like a snowball rolling downhill until something trivial turns it into a serial killer that sleeps with your parents. You might have heard depression compared to an 800-pound gorilla sitting on your chest, but nobody ever mentions that it also talks shit about your hopes and dreams.

Nobody wants to talk about it. The people that don’t have it don’t understand that it’s not something you can just shut off by going outside for a walk. It’s not something you just “get over.” It isn’t sadness, it’s a mental cancer. It’s an illness. In the same way the flu or Crohn’s or celiac disease––for people that actually have it, not any of you fringe, hippy fucks that want to deprive yourself of gluten because it’s so edgy––might lay you up in bed or on the bathroom floor. In that very same vein, some days I don’t want to put pants on and see anybody. I can’t do it. I don’t have the physical energy for it. Thinking thoughts is enough to exhaust me. My body feels heavy. My brain is rolling around in its cranial cage, just trying to get comfortable. I can feel it trying to flip the meninges over to the cool side.

It doesn’t always manifest itself in the same way, either, but it does often feel like whatever I’m doing is normal. Drinking myself into a stupor might feel healthy because the swim uncoils the python wrapped around the base of my skull. Acting like an asshole feels rational because why are these friends wasting their time on me? I’m the worst. Just dragging them down. Leave, already! You’re worth more than time with me!

I cannot tell you how many times it has reached a maddening crescendo, where wave after wave of a void that’s so thorough it is a physical force crashing into and pressing down on me until I’m crying into my knees by the side of the tub. And then, for a few minutes, it stops. Poof. As quietly and gracefully as blowing the florets off a dandelion. I’ll pull my head up and realize there isn’t a single sound around me. The bathroom is still and sharply in focus. My body feels removed, almost weightless.

But maybe I just need to be around more people, right?

People that don’t have these bouts of illness––seasonal or recurring––don’t like to talk about it because they don’t understand it or because it scares them. But ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. It doesn’t make people suffer less. People that do have these afflictions don’t like to talk about it because it makes those lingering thoughts turn into real things or because they’re scared they’ll be ostracized or belittled or because it makes them feel vulnerable. All of these things were true for me.

Before I started talking to someone, before I was diagnosed as bipolar, depressed and anxious, I lost my shit trying to figure out why doing and saying destructive things felt so normal… until they didn’t. Those waves ebb and flow, and moments of clarity in the eye of the storm would leave me feeling aghast at myself. I lost friends. I ruined relationships. I used to joke that I hit rock bottom so often I should buy a timeshare.

But it is manageable. I’ve been managing it better, finally, over the last year or two. I can recognize the symptoms now and take steps to minimize the worst carnival ride ever. So, if I have any advice to give, I suppose this is it: If you don’t have these feelings, if the winter (or summer, or whatever) doesn’t put you in a tailspin, I can almost guarantee that at least one of your friends is afflicted. Be patient with them. Be available, but not overbearing. Listen to them. Remind them of why you value them. Be sensitive to the battle they’re going through: it’s a difficult one.

If you do have these feelings––that murderous, dad-banging snowball; that hefty ape that won’t shut its fucking trap––then I’m sorry. Don’t ever forget that you are loved. Cling to positive memories. Think about the reasons you can’t wait for tomorrow––you’ve got a new joke to tell, a painting to craft, a movie to see, a dog to pet. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to feel weak. Most importantly, it’s okay to talk to someone. I had to find a stranger. A therapist. It took a few tries to get the right one, too, so don’t give up if your first choice turns out to be a fart in a fancy suit.

Find a hobby you like. I write. Play some music, maybe. Or perhaps a walk outside will actually help you, you hiking fiend. Climb a mountain. Netflix that show it’s more embarrassing to admit you like than it is to admit you’re depressed.

Find that thing and cling to it. Don’t give up. You are stronger than you know.

If you feel overwhelmed or need someone to talk to, please dial the toll-free crisis line at 1-800-273-8255. They are there to listen. Not to judge.