There’s something utterly terrifying about the depressed mind, how it ravages the sense of self.
Any semblance of self-worth or self-love — I mean the latter not in the narcissistic sense — crumbles, as the mind, perhaps the devil within, shames, blames, abuses and torments.
It’s curious how the mind, this great gift and friend, can all at once become a curse and foe.
I think Lewis Wolpert captures it best when he refers to severe depression as “malignant sadness”, there being something fundamentally malevolent in this dark emotional state, which he found more painful than grieving his beloved wife of many years, more painful than battling an aggressive form of cancer.
How is it that the mind can turn on us in this way, and seek to destroy us, or rather our heart and spirit — at times devastatingly effective, the great prevalence of suicide testimony to this.
I emerge out of one such black episode now, more than anything fucking relieved that I’ve somehow survived it again. Perhaps I will not be so fortunate the next time.
It’s here where notions of mental strength, courage and strong character in the face of severe depression mean little or nothing. There is grace in coming out of malignant sadness — the grace of loved ones and community — but no more than this.
We, of course, hear people all the time, most notably on social media platforms, which I write on now, proclaiming that doing the work — the therapeutic work that is, the self-work — will banish the return of depression for good, but I no longer believe this. And I write this as someone who has done a lot of work the last few years. For there are too many strong and good people who have succumbed to depression and taken their lives, while countless other assholes live on, in blissful ignorance, blessed with a stunning lack of both self awareness and emotional intelligence.
Anyone who has really experienced severe depression would not dare claim their strength of character, courage, or work on themselves got them out of it. Rather, anyone who is fortunate enough to arise out of the depths of despair, arises because of a complex almost mystical alchemy, a curious melange of forces and factors coming together to bring relief from such immense mental torment, underpinned by love and care.
Those who have experienced such depths typically can only respond with immense relief that the light has returned once more, uttering quietly to themselves, “There but for the grace of God go I, again.”
Each episode brings rupture and loss, be this loved ones who see me fall apart and collapse before their eyes, entering a state of paralysis, with them barely able to recognise the Nick they thought they knew. Can this part or expression of me — hollow, broken and desperate for an end to suffering — be integrated into the many other parts that constitute Nick, or indeed any other person who has experienced severe depression?
This integration also requires grace, of community, there being no more pertinent a figure of a man who deserved such grace than David Foster Wallace, who was not rewarded or pardoned for his great literary talents, his gifts to the world, rather punished for them, such was the extent of his mental torment, which ultimately elected to destroy not save him.
But also the grace of loved ones — my children, family and friends, who are able to see beyond the broken part, those parts that still shine bright. It was Kirsti’s love that helped me really see this, that the broken part did not define the rest of me and that perhaps the idea of a single unified self is nothing but an illusion anyhow.
Grace really is all there is. Few would choose a state as miserable, as torturous, as severe depression. Its causes are multitudinous — genetic, childhood-driven, systemic, environmental, cultural, et cetera.
The truth is we still do not understand how a mind can eat and cannibalise itself — how self-love can so quickly become self-hate — and though much of it clearly lies in childhood trauma, much of it also lies beyond our comprehension, in infinite complexity, as Foster Wallace knew all too well, with us, as humans, full of jest and seriousness, resisting clear definition and embracing the paradoxical until the very end.
All I can say is, “Hallelujah!” May it never return again… until the next time! And there’s the infinite jest!