caged

In ILLNESS AS METAPHOR the late Susan Sontag wrote of the cancer victim who must face the (often unspoken) cultural belief that it is a failure of strength,some personal weakness of will, that causes the disease, thus imbuing the victim with a sense of shame. The victim is a loser. A wholesome temperament, an ability to handle the stresses of life, a greater feeling of hope: such a person would not be stricken with cancer. And, in the odd chance that such a person become ill, the strength of character defeats the disease. A tumor is something alien that attacks the body from without by invading from within. Yet it is the body itself that breeds this alien, as cancer cells are mutations of normal ones.

Depression is viewed by many as a failing of the will. How can something that exists inside the psyche, rather than organically within some organ or bodily system, be a real disease? When I am depressed I should just be able to get over it. Failure to do so shows weakness in my character, a willingness to fold, to be hopeless, to not try to smile and face the day.

But I know that as long as I can remember my consciousness is grey like the clouds that thicken the sky today. I can enjoy things, I do laugh, I can be quite funny myself, but those are moments, gifts that are made more vivid because of the backdrop from which they emerge. I remember as a small boy when afternoons would just seem like an endless stretch of nothingness, with nothing good, no joy or eagerness in my heart. Just a kind of blank dullness. I would want to be left alone. Things have not changed so much. So I know it is not my fault. This is how I was made.