depression is the little death

Originally I’d planned to research death, or at the very least to write about how I felt about it.  Instead, I’ve found myself in the barely-functioning mode of what passes for depression for me.  I don’t much get depressed, or at least I tell myself that.

Daisy asked me the other day if I’d ever contemplated suicide.  I told her what I tell anyone who asks or has asked that question: once, before she was born, I seriously considered it.  I never had before that, and haven’t since, but it was during my second miscarriage—the one that underscored that I was, at 25, useless and barren and generally fucked up.  Post-ectopic pregnancy, I got pregnant again, but there were complications with that pregnancy almost immediately.  The fetus was damaged from the drugs I’d taken to cope with the Ectopic Situation.  It wasn’t viable.  And I was destroyed.

My shrink cautions me about using words like "destroyed"--he might worry about hyperbole or implications of language--but I feel guiltless here.  I was so devastated I wasn’t even examining my own motives, I wasn’t getting that superfluous feeling that often appears in highly emotional moments, my sense of humor wasn’t interfering.  Black and white: I was barren, I’d lost the second baby.  Nothing was helping, nothing was worth it.  I was in the bathtub when I thought about killing myself.  I tried to imagine how I would do it: and it is true, utterly true, that you don’t think about your loved ones, how your self-inflicted harm might affect them.  You are only thinking about the end to your pain.

Naturally we see the happy ending here from prime retrospective: I went on to get pregnant, have a healthy baby, finish college in three years, and move to a town I still adore.  I’m a mother.  I have a daughter.  My own suicidal thoughts have been far from me for fourteen years, and good fucking riddance.  Death is close enough at all times without helping it along.

But here is the depression again, it's light this time, I can still function, but I don’t want to do anything—I don’t want to see anyone—I just want to work, to come home, to read, to watch TV, to sleep.  I don’t want to cook or interact with friends, I don’t want to go anywhere, I don’t want to live in a higher-impact way.  I want to be left alone.  Then I think: is this a side-effect of JP’s death?  Am I affected by that?  And someone in my head says: Why are you bummed?  You barely thought about him anymore.  And I feel guilty: he had a partner, she’s the one who has a RGIHT to grieve.  Daisy has a right.  I don’t.  Anyhoodle, why would I grieve?  What was he to me?

I remembered him comforting me when Ursa died.  My dog, my precious dog, died soon after my familial relationships died; it was a lot to process.  I try to think of other memories of him, positive or negative…the time I chased him around Monroe Park.  When I handed him my Coldstone cup and Daisy threw herself between us.  Turning on the light one night when he’d said something stupid and telling him to either consider what he said or get out forever.  Open Mike night at Cozmic Pizza when he announced to the crowd that I’d just gotten a teaching job with 4J. 

I have a list today—on the list was “update blog,” so even though this is rushed, stream-of-consciousness, I can check one thing off.  Move.  Work.  Play.  Grip inertia, hold the hand of depression so that it doesn’t feel so monolithic and alone.

seconds

I found his obituary yesterday only because I was searching for the link to the notice of his death.  This reminds me of another recent death—that of my stepbrother, Adam, after a painful fight with melanoma—and the tears and trauma that accompanied the writing of his obituary.  Obituaries.  Strange.  I think I’m going to go ahead and write mine, maybe tomorrow, just for funzies, just to inject a little fun into obituaries…because they’re no fun, you know that?  Epitaphs are kind of fun—I even did a report on epitaphs when I was a freshman in high school and death was far, far away.  But obituaries.  I have to give the family props for admitting that he committed suicide—no euphemisms or omissions there—but it’s still not real to me.

What is going to make it real?

Adam and I weren’t close.  I used to think it ironic that his name and my first love’s name were the same; but he was always there, and when he wasn’t, I staggered a little.  There was a blip in my consciousness.  I tried to be there for my stepmother, but I faltered there as well because of my own fears and prejudices (to be covered in some future month’s topic: FAMILY).  But he died, leaving behind a wife, a son, a mother...and I think my metaphorical fingers tightened even harder on Daisy. 

JP was in the house when my stepmother called with the news of Adam’s death.  Daisy and I clung to one another in the bathroom of our old Jack-and-Jill cottage, and JP offered to stay at the cottage when I flew down south to be with my stepmother.  Which he did.  Daisy felt comfortable with him.  He was her father figure, for better or for worse.  I don’t think I ever forgave him for managing to make it work with Daisy, while not being able to make it work with me; but at the same time I was thankful we hadn’t made it work, and jogging along blithely with THOSE conflicting emotions was the love I always have for anyone who sincerely loves Daisy.  There you have it: jealousy; bitterness; indifference; love; and boredom.  Five things I thought of, when I thought of JP.

Now there are none, yet fifty million more.  Now there is a hole, but that hole is full of worry and doubt and guilt and anger. I thought today, if I could just punch him in the face, and I remembered wanting to punch him years ago...for different reasons.  Now I couldn't care less about his heart; now I care about my daughter's heart.  Which he broke, the moment he put himself out of his misery.

Yesterday the radiologist put a needle into my hip so that they could inject something that would make the MRI more easily read.  It hurt like blazes, and I started to cry and thrash around a little bit--just above the sternum, because I knew if I moved a muscle below my belly button, that enormous needle would wreak havoc.  An enormous bruise blossomed on my hip, regardless; I wrote that it's shaped like New Hampshire, because it is.  What does this have to do with death, you ask...nothing, really, but it's news, and the MRI was coffin-like enough, I suppose.

We begin with skin

Not comfortable in my own skin in spite of 40+ years of living, seeking to make a difference in that.  Catalysts include recent suicide of former partner, general sense of unhappiness and weariness, multiple aspects of my life in which I point to my own flaws and choices as rationale for hating myself.  We’ll do it month by month and hopefully I’ll have 20 entries per month; we’re starting with November, the month of Thanksgiving in this part of the world, in which I tackle Death.

JP killed himself a couple weeks ago.  For those of you not in the know, JP was my partner from 2005-2010, or thereabouts.  We were together for about five years.  He was a morbidly depressed musician, a Eugene native, with a huge functional family (for the most part) though his immediate family is a tad weird, like most families.  JP’s paternal grandfather had been a pharmacist in Springfield, an abusive husband and parent, and eventually committed suicide.  JP’s father was also abusive (though JP never went into great details, partly because I couldn’t handle hearing it) and also committed suicide.  This made JP box office gold, as I told him (so insensitively) for suicide, and indeed he spoke about it often.  He was on a complex cocktail of antidepressants which he switched up periodically; some days were better than others, for JP.

We’d been apart for almost two years when he killed himself.  He’d had a series of other girlfriends—it certainly wasn’t as if he couldn’t replace me—but I never felt like I’d made a mistake, breaking up with him.  I did love him—it is hard for me to write that, because it seems I don’t love many people that deeply, that truly, and it still seems strange to me that it was him I loved.  We’d only hooked up originally because of attraction.  We didn’t have much in common, didn’t have much to say to one another.  When we did talk about ideas, we argued.  It was a more shallow relationship than I’d have liked, but I can’t seem to sleep with friends: even now I admire couples who DO things together, go run or ski or craft or wine-taste or whatever.  I’ve never done hobbies with a partner.  I’ve only had two of them, anyway, and now only ex remains.

I drove by his house yesterday.  My heart thudded—literally thudded, I took a moment to reflect on how I love it when clichés work out in real life—as I turned down his street.  It was a fact, as Daisy might post on Facebook, that I didn’t believe he was dead.  It was a fact that his was the only corpse I’ve ever wanted to see—not out of morbidity or vengeance, but because I wanted to see him dead so I could believe him dead.  There were two cars in the driveway, and no police tape (why had I expected that?) marking where he’d shot himself (allegedly shot himself, whispered my stubborn subconscious; there’s no proof!)

 

I drove on.

Death is our November topic.