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.