David's Inferno

by David Blistein

  Instead of making me feel guilty for not being able to be there for her during my madness—as any self-respecting Jewish mother should be able to do—she actually managed to concoct a little Jewish guilt of her own for passing along some of her dolorous Romanian DNA. Her brothers, my uncles in particular, strike me, in retrospect, as kind of old-world depressives—barely “worthy” of the name—who’d like to smile more but don’t know exactly what to smile about; as if it were a skill that wasn’t really taught in their family.

  My father’s family of voluble, sharp-tongued Lithuanians was the opposite. As kids, we never knew whether the spot-on and often cutting one-liners exchanged between siblings and in-laws were grounded in love, annoyance, or humor. Eventually, we too realized that all three were important ingredients in the traditional familial tzimmes, and slowly learned the fine art of trying to keep them in balance.

  As far as they were concerned, my mother was a saint. After all, she had spent all those decades simultaneously enjoying my father’s intelligence and wit, enduring his volubility and temper, and worrying about his health (first heart attack at 43) and affection for Scotch (Dewars on crushed ice with a twist of lemon).

  Maybe I was just bringing both sides of my genetic demons out of the closet. Maybe my mother felt subconsciously that it was a necessary thing I’d done for the family and that she should do her part to exorcise them with me. Family meant a lot to her.

  And so, while I didn’t have a helluva lot of emotional support to offer her at the time—and my spontaneous humor was often more tragic than comic—she continued to call, every month or so, and say, “I need a David fix.” And I would cringe. And I would go. And I would amuse her as best I could. While she would make feel me at home as only a mother can.

  Sometimes a little denial is a good thing. In fact, sometimes it’s a subtle and profound form of acknowledgment and acceptance.

  In terms of family, the holidays are the best of times and the worst of times. Particularly for those struggling to make it until the turkey/Klonopin/whiskey kicks in. (Don’t try this at home … or anywhere else for that matter.)

  At least you don’t have to deal with the everyday stresses of work. When it’s just you and the family, it seems perfectly reasonable to say, “I think I’ll go to my room and take a little rest,” as opposed to, “I think I’ll skip this meeting, go to my office, close the door, and hide under the desk.”

  On the other hand, you usually have to deal with the stresses of being with a lot of people who haven’t seen you all year. This involves masking your symptoms in entirely new ways—unless you want to spend all weekend watching mom and close relatives give you deeply concerned, if furtive, looks.

  I assure you, however, that a lot of those “looks” are in your imagination (along with a familiar toxic brew of other paranoias). You may think you’re broadcasting your fragile state at full-volume. But, for the most part, it’s muffled by the cacophony of conversation, laughter, china, turkey, TV, and the occasional frustrated expletive.

  I remember my traditional Thanksgiving walk with my brother in 2005. It was the first time my nephew joined us. Being able to pepper him with questions about school, sports, music, and the latest technology gave me a lot of “cover.” My brother did see through some of the act. But, even now, he admits to not really understanding what I was going through until he started reading my descriptions of that time.

  Rest assured, even people who can tell there’s something wrong have a hard time figuring out how serious it is, especially when you respond with the Traditional Depressives’ Holiday Disclaimer:

  Yeah, I had a bit of a hard time a while back, but things are getting much better. In fact I just started [choose one or more] …

  • doing yoga

  • seeing a new psychiatrist

  • planning a trip to the south of France.

  • writing, painting, weaving, sculpting, baking, and/or having sex again.

  NOTE: When reciting this disclaimer, always speak quickly and finish the run-on sentence with: “… So hey, how are you doing?”

  Talking to kids is another issue altogether. A friend with a seriously depressed wife and two young children wrote me how he could hardly bear the thought of his kids having to feel the weight of their mother’s moods any more than was absolutely necessary. I’m sure it was no easier for her.

  Based on the many autobiographies that reference—or are substantially based on—a parent’s mental illness, it seems that children are far more affected by what’s really going on than what you pretend is going on. I doubt kids can ever avoid the natural tendency to develop defense mechanisms, whether it’s to withdraw into their own world, lash out in anger, match your moods swing for swing, or come up with some other creative response. In some cases, they try to parent you. While humbling, this might be, to some extent, unavoidable … particularly in single-parent homes.

  Maybe the best you can do is to remember that it’s your depression, not theirs; a thought that can be particularly helpful when your kid does something so annoying it triggers an explosion of some of that intense agitation, frustration, and/or rage you’ve been harboring. Regular outbursts like that can easily take a bunch of therapy sessions for a kid to get over—now, or when they’re all grown up and find themselves behaving the same way. I’m sure that every parent, kid, and family is different. And that “age-appropriate” is more than a buzzword. There are a lot of professionals with much more experience than me dealing with this issue. One wrote me:

  Sometimes I suggest that the person going through the depression could (especially with younger children) refer to it in the third person. Something like: “My black cloud wants to visit with me pretty strongly right now, so I’ll just have to go and be with it for a while. It’s okay, it’ll pass, but right now I’ll have to go and be with it.” And partners can do a lot to help by reinforcing this. I think age-appropriate openness and honesty is key.

  I can’t vouch for the approach personally, but the image is spot on. Depression is like a whole other person. It does feel like a black cloud. I sure struggled hard not to make it seem like the whole of me. Next time, I’ll give it a name. Maybe I’ll call it Dante. That’ll teach him.

  Fortunately, at the time of my breakdown, our daughter Emily was in her mid-20s. She knew I was having a rough time. But also that I’d had rough times before and pulled through. Since she lived a few hours away, there wasn’t a whole lot she could do besides visit occasionally, be sympathetic on the phone, and exchange occasional emails in which I provided updates in language so articulately restrained that it concealed, to some extent, the tempest underneath. Plus, we are both familiar with the power of self-medicating with humor. It’s a drug we share whenever possible.

  It was probably more important for me than her that I tried to “own” my states. It’s one thing if you can’t manage to act normal with friends. They can make you a cup of tea, give you a hug, make sure you’re safely home, and call to check in later. It’s way more discomfiting to show that kind of weakness in front of your child, whatever age he or she is. Having him or her feel like they need to parent you undermines the very structure of your relationship.

  There are whole books written by and for people in their 50s and 60s about how to deal with sick parents in their 80s and 90s. Certainly when my parents were dying, my brother and I had to take on some traditional parental roles, from balancing the checkbook to dealing with doctors. That’s to be expected. But there aren’t as many roadmaps for dealing with a successful, high-functioning middle-aged parent who’s suddenly been reduced to a dysfunctional blob. In fact, in those cases, most people write books about how their parent’s trauma traumatized them!

  Emily was beyond the age at which I was concerned about my depression causing her irreparable subconscious psychological harm. Still, there was no reason to flaunt it. Whenever we talked or wrote, I did my best to tell her that I was feeling better and that the latest medication (vitamins, acu
puncturist, or homeopath) seemed to be helping—i.e., don’t worry about dad.

  I found a certain distinct comfort in being with her. We could both intentionally act as if things were relatively normal, without pretending that, in many ways, they weren’t. It was as if we had a tacit agreement that we’d give it our best shot for as long as we were together. Since our love for and acceptance of each other was, and is, unconditional, if my sadness or agitation won out—if I got weepy or “needed to get going”—well, we’d just deal with it. In the meantime, I’d ask her about what was going on in her life the way I always had. And, in truth, I’d be genuinely interested in her responses. It got me out of my skin and made me feel comfortable in it at the same time.

  Still, there was only so much either of us could do. I remember one specific evening that she called and, while she and Wendy talked, I prepared myself with some positive news about something I’d written or someone I’d seen or even a funny story about her grandmother. But, as soon as I picked up the phone and heard her voice, I choked up. Big time.

  At that moment, it didn’t matter that she was 25. It didn’t matter that I was 55. It didn’t matter how much we loved each other. I was so emotionally entangled I couldn’t get out of my own way long enough to say hello … or even goodnight … to my own daughter.

  As much as I hurt, that hurt even more. DNA runs deep.

  Still, fundamentally, one of the “gifts” of a psychological firestorm is how it affects your relationships. It could be as simple as your favorite barista remembering your name and smiling a little brighter when you walk in; or the people at work realizing that deadlines aren’t as stressful as they used to be; or friends sensing that you’re more open, curious, and (especially in my case) way less critical.

  And, as for the people closest to you, it can transform your relationships in ways that neither of you could have ever imagined.

  Married to the Madness

  Everything nourishes what is strong already.

  —JANE AUSTEN

  DSM AXIS 4: “Severe; wearing on marriage.” (Psychiatrist’s notes, March 2007.)

  Living with a depressive can be brutal. Just brutal. Their emotions can suck your mildest enthusiasm into a black hole deep enough to give Dale Carnegie pause.

  Often, Wendy had no choice but to get out of harm’s way. Going to work was a lot easier than being with me. Having dinner alone with friends was a whole lot more fun than dragging me along—even though the specter of my absence could cast more of a pall than my just showing up and making the best of it.

  Even the well-meaning, “How was he when you left? How’s he doing today? This week?” could get tired after a while.

  And, while I’m sure she was a little concerned that day I loaded my VW van with clothes, notebooks, road bike, maps, and madness, and drove off to parts unknown, I’m sure part of her gave a little sigh of relief.

  Fortunately—at least in terms of her ability to understand and hang in there—she’d been down similar paths. In the early 1990s she began to see that many seemingly disparate aspects of her life fit into an overall pattern of serious depression. As she wrote at the time:

  Imagine living in a house with lots of rooms. Some you live in every day, some you use once in a while, and some you might not go into for months at a time. Depression is like that room you go into rarely—but it’s still a part of your house and you know exactly what’s in it and what everything looks like, and when you’re inside that room there’s no denying it’s real and that you most definitely are there.

  Like me, she had found ways to self-medicate for many years. And also, like me, she found those techniques increasingly ineffective. After several grueling tries of various medications, she found one that worked with minor adjustments for many years.

  That experience helped her keep her own sanity while watching mine crack; helped her endure the ups and downs, tentative hopes and heart-breaking disappointments of the briefest respites and most promising cures; helped her to continue to have faith that it would pass.

  What choice did she have? Just as I couldn’t imagine either committing suicide or living the rest of my life like this; she never imagined either getting a divorce or living the rest of her life like this.

  “Do you want to …?” You don’t realize how often you ask your partner that question until, for weeks and months, all you get back is a stream of desultories: “Okay.” “Sure.” “Fine.” “Whatever.” “I don’t know.” “Maybe.” “Why don’t you go by yourself?”

  “You want to go for a walk?”

  “Okay. I guess.”

  “You want to go visit Emily?”

  “Sure. You mean Saturday? I don’t know. Well, you decide.”

  “Maybe we should take a trip. Just get on a plane and go somewhere?”

  “That sounds like fun.” Said in a tone of voice that says the opposite. Not to mention the deep undertone of claustrophobic anxiety that goes with the idea of getting on a plane.

  “You want me to meet you downtown after work for dinner and then we’ll go home and have wild sex?”

  “Okay.” “Sure.” “Fine.” “Whatever.”

  Sex is, of course, a topic of its own. Suffice it to say that, regardless of the physical ramifications of major depression, frequent sobbing isn’t exactly a turn-on.

  In all the cases above, you’d fake it if you could. But you can’t. Despite the best of intentions … the strongest wish to make your partner happy … no matter what you do or say … or even how you perform, you feel impotent in every sense of the word, in every cell of your body. And there’s no place to hide.

  All I could do was try to keep the worst of my wailings for times when I was alone. All Wendy could do was walk beside me and intervene when things got totally out of hand. There were many of these little interventions, but one stands out.

  It was one of those kaleidoscopic fall days in 2006. When the maple leaves are taking off and the oaks are hanging in there, showing intimations of what’s to come. The kind that are particularly humiliating to someone who knows rapture when he sees it but is unable to go along for the ride. Wendy had gone off somewhere and I’d stayed behind to work outside. After purging as much dirt, sweat, and jagged edges as I could, I’d gone in to take a shower.

  There was no hot water.

  I’m pretty good at figuring things like this out: tracing wires and pipes and ductwork; silencing rattling refrigerators; investigating doors that don’t latch; and even programming remote controls. My fixes are usually amateurish, but they work.

  In this case, I couldn’t find anything wrong. I grew frantic. I was paralyzed by the decision of whether to call an electrician, plumber, oil company, or psychic. Embarrassed by the thought of having to confess my helplessness to a professional. And, oh my God! It’s Sunday! I can’t call today! (You had to be there … in my head, that is.) The thought of Wendy coming home and learning there was no hot water was devastating. The more irrational I became, the more irrational I became, the more irrational I became. I finally just went out to my cabin and started screaming.

  When I heard Wendy’s car pull in, I walked to the house and greeted her, babbling about this apocalyptic systems failure that had befallen us. She went to get a sleeping bag, walked me out onto the grass, helped me get in it and lie down in the sun. A few minutes later she came out with a pillow and cup of tea and watched over me for a while. Then she went back in the house, called the oil company, and got the hot water fixed.

  A friend once wrote me what it was like for him to live with his severely depressed wife:

  Marriage is so tricky because naturally there are issues that come up which are not caused by the depression, but I’m so sensitized at this point, it is almost impossible to separate the two. Without going all 12-steps, I gotta say that it’s important to accept that there’s a problem. We now discuss freely which aspects of her behavior are “normal” and which are not. I don’t even know if it matters whether we successfully i
dentify which is which, it’s therapeutic to have the discussion with the third entity (her mental illness) sitting at the table.

  It is really hard to determine what’s the depression and what’s everyday partner stuff. There’s such a natural inclination to resist the diagnosis and/or try to just deal with it—remain silent, try not to react, redefine roles—that it can remain the elephant in the living room, dining room, kitchen, back porch, and bedroom. In some cases, for years.

  In that sense, Wendy and I were “lucky.” Even though it had been years since we’d last spent any serious time with the elephant (and didn’t exactly welcome him with open arms), denial wasn’t really an issue. We became hyper-alert to every shift of his floppy ears and every restless nudge of his trunk.

  He lumbered along with us on walks in the woods. He went for rides with us in the car, sat behind us at movies—eating popcorn and peanuts, of course—and hovered in the background when we visited friends.

  Even now, we don’t let our guard down completely. We probably couldn’t even if we wanted to because we’ve developed such a fine-tuned sense of each other’s emotions. Which, in many ways, is a good thing. We don’t have to tell each other when we feel a little off. We just say, “Don’t worry. It’s not chemical.” And hope we’re right.

  When one or both partners is a depressive, marriage can be a tenuous and often tentative prayer, a partnership that endures by sheer virtue of broken hearted determination and stubborn unwillingness to choose the alternative. And, undoubtedly, a host of other elements, from children and finances to karma, pride, faith, hope, and even a little fear of the unknown. As a similarly psychotic friend wrote me: “My spouse ought to get some award for patience and tolerance.”