stuck

I am listening to NPR, to Studio 360, and Kay Jamison is being interviewed about bipolar disorder, depression and creativity. She explains that in mild manic states a person is disinhibited, and creativity explodes. There is a wild urge to create. Creative people tend to be introspective to begin with, and the creative person who has episodes of hypomania which lead to the creation of new work. I know that this is true of me. Such is the dilemma that confronts people with bipolar disorder and/or depression. Does the medication I take reduce my imagination? I know that before I was on meds I wrote a lot more. But I was also utterly tormented so much of the time that I found it harder to get through the days. When I am depressed, I am not productive. What do I do? This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately.

Yesterday I had a great meeting with my collaborators on OEDIPUS AT COLONUS. It was nice being back at Vassar, although the weather sucked. I realize how lucky I am to have been a student there. It was life-changing. And now, to be working as a peer with two of my favorite professors, is a thrill. So it was a fruitful trip. And I am energized to get back to work.

not a choice after all

two doors
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

Yesterday I found myself contemplating the comment I received after my "depression" post. Although I was quite busy, finishing the second segment of the OEDIPUS music, I was also preoccupied with the issue of how depression is viewed. The commentator's remarks troubled me. So to exorcise the issue from my mind, at least for now, I will address it here.

In ILLNESS AS METAPHOR the late Susan Sontag addressed how tuberculosis and cancer, both diseases that were inevitably fatal in the nineteenth century (and a good part of the twentieth as well). Both were regarded as diseases brought on by individual temperament. TB was a disease that affected the sensitive, the artistic; such heightened sensitivity made one susceptible, and thus TB was a romantic disease, almost desirable. Cancer, on the other hand, was linked to repression; the repression of anger, of sadness, of other "negative" emotions led the body to turn against itself, to destroy itself from within. Modern science and medicine disproved these notions, but traces of them persist still, in that even today some cancer victims blame themselves, and a cancer patient is described as "battling" the disease, "fighting" it, so that, if the disease wins, the victim might be regarded as weak-willed. It is not insignificant that Sontag herself lived with cancer for several decades until she eventually died from it. She was frank about her illness. She did not hide it as something shameful.

When someone with chronic, life-long depression is exhorted to "think positive," or to change his/her outlook on life, the advice is inevitably borne of an attitude that depression is a flaw of character, a weakness, much as cancer was a disease of character in the Victorian mind. Many people with depression lead active, productive lives. I have much to be happy with in my life, much to be thankful for, and I do not need others to remind me of this.

I have learned to accept my depression as a fact of my life. Ignoring it, or refusing to speak of it, makes it shameful, like Sontag's cancer victims. Like Sontag with her cancer I will address my depression head on. It is important for people to realize that depression is an illness, a medical illness, not a weakness of character. As I wrote yesterday, I don't write this blog to be yet another blithe "Hallmark" card-like series of statements meant to hide the craggy ugly bumps that are a part of life's landscape.

comment on a comment

I just received this comment on my latest post:

You should do something about your depression, it's hanging on way too much on your blog. If you read through its entirety, I'm sure you'll find it more depressing than Jane Didion's latest book. Perhaps you need daylight lighting in your home in winter to help offset the early dark nights that might trigger sadness?

As much as it may have been well-intentioned, the writer shows a clear misunderstanding of both depression itself and of my blog. I read Joan Didion's latest book. Yes, it was depressing, but it was her truth. I don't write my blog for unselfish reasons. I blog, in part, to articulate what it is like to live with depression. It is always interesting to me how people who do not have depression regard it as some sort of weakness of character, or equate it with sadness. My depression is not due to lack of light; I have lived with this all my life and it hits me regardless of season. And if depression is hanging on "way too much" in this blog, I can't apologize. It's my life. C'est tout.

There is one bonus that creative types like me get from depression. I think it compels me to create beautiful things. So maybe then there is a balance after all.

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alleyway
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

Depression is cruel because it trivializes all that opposes it. For two weeks or so this one has been gathering and now it has landed. All the things that had me feeling good, energetic, all that seemed promising, recede, and now I am stuck in some dingy alley of the mind, like the one in the picture, and if I could curl up and disappear until it passes I would. I wish, when I am depressed, that I could just check out of my life the way one checks out of a hotel. I would return, of course, when I felt better.