Normally, I'm an optimist. Annoyingly so. Throughout my life, more often than not, I can find the bright side of things, even when the darkness is totally surrounding me or the people I love. I've simply come to trust that things will eventually get better, because so far, they always have.
In college, when I was a vowed religious brother (a modern-day monk) I suffered with clinical depression. I didn't know it was clinical depression at first, of course. I just knew I was deeply unhappy all the time: thinking, feeling, speaking, and acting very much out of character from my usual chipper self. I thought everyone was sneaking around my back, whispering things about me, or otherwise conspiring to find their happiness far away from me.
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| Early morning on Lake Pauline in Ludlow, Vermont. As you sip your coffee and see a scene like this, you can't help but feel immersed in the beauty before you, even that which is still cloaked in darkness. |
The crack between the bottom of my bedroom door and the flat carpet of my monastery bedroom offered just enough of a view out into the hallway to know when someone was passing by, and more importantly, it offered me better acoustics than my ear to the door alone could provide.
I needed to know what they were saying, where they were going, why they weren't knocking on my door to invite me to go along with them. It was a sickness I couldn't snap myself out of, mostly because I had no idea I was even ill. I knew the world had grown much darker and more stressful, but I wasn't able to make the connection between chemical imbalances in my brain and all that I was witnessing, experiencing, and suffering through.
My formation team finally recognized something was going on with me, and before I knew it, I was sitting in the passenger seat of one of our cars as my Novice Director drove me to an appointment with a psychologist.
If you've ever heard or uttered the phrase, often shouted, 'You should have your head examined!', you know it's not generally offered in a kind way. No, none of the monks or priests I lived with said this to me exactly, but they didn't have to. I felt like a complete failure just knowing they were bringing me to see a psychologist. I'd been a monk for three and a half years at that point, so while life was already quite a struggle for me, somehow knowing I was too much for even them to handle made it all the worse.
(The journey from that impossibly long drive to Yonkers where I first met my doctor to the man I am today is a much longer story, some of which I detailed more extensively through a character named Brother Cody who I created for my book Outside In.)
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| As the sun peeks up from behind the mountain rise, you know the entire scene will soon be drenched in light. You celebrate the sun's arrival, but you still cherish the moody darkness of the lake. |
The good news is, seeing a psychologist, receiving my diagnosis, and accepting that my entire worldview was merely clouded by a chemical imbalance in my brain has helped me so much over the years. While my initial struggle lasted upwards of two years, my bouts with clinical depression have since only surfaced for two or three days at a time. They show up, I identify what they are almost right away, and I move onward, trusting the feelings will soon subside...because they always do.
This has been a consistent pattern in my life for the past 27 years since I left the monastery. A fog comes upon me, I instantly recognize it for what it is, and I see it lift again in two or three days' time. And the fog only appears two or three times a year now too, so it's no big deal, only... This fall, it arrived on queue, but still hasn't left.
Somewhere in September this year, a 27-year-old trigger was activated. The situations are still ongoing in some ways, so I don't want to discuss them now, but suffice it to say, they made me feel immensely defeated by life and loved ones. I was not just outnumbered, but outsmarted too, and things I thought I had some control over left me helpless. It was like I was happily holding a helium-filled balloon in my hand one moment, and the next moment--whoosh!--it was flying this way and that all around the room.
Moments like this happen to all of us, of course, and in some ways, I believe they can be good reminders that nothing is within our control, that some stories simply don't end all that nicely.
Because there were situations plural at the time this trigger went off, and because there have consistently been more and more situations piling up Job-style ever since, my depression sits heavily on top of me even as I type this out. My two-or-three day average has been absolutely shot to hell by this season-long depression--a seasonal depression long before the usual season, you might say.
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| Seeking out the light. |
I'm a big believer in the first step of the 12 steps program, which in a larger context can be summarized by the statement, "I admit that I've got a problem, and it's totally out of my control."
Admitting things aren't right can be a terribly difficult admission to make, but once we get that far, once we just take this very first step, we are that much closer to healthy joy and sober thinking--with or without the involvement of addiction.
To that end, I'm closer. I've long since admitted I am powerless over this depression. I've made apologies to those who have witnessed or been recipients of my outbursts, and I have even made pre-apologies for my negativity and micro-aggressions.
It's been about three months since I first felt depression weighing me down this time around, and while three months is an awful long time to be feeling so lousy, I am no less optimistic that this fog shall lift soon. This cloud will clear. This heavy stress will evaporate off me, just as it always does. I know this from experience and I know this from the golden vault of sheer willpower whose assets within me are many. I am more powerful than this cloud, and my sun is far brighter than this darkness. I'm not there yet, but I will be again soon. Not today, but maybe tomorrow.
