For those who think I’m wallowing in self pity over here…I am. Figured I may as well indulge myself. I mean, I’m suffering from deep, long-lasting depression that has driven me to actual electroshock treatments, I’m unable to write regularly in order to make my living the way I want to, and I just lost the first girl I’ve ever met who I think was an actual near-perfect match for me.
So yeah, I’m gonna enjoy some tiny violins for the moment. I’m entitled to be sad, and I am.
This song always gets under my skin.
I’ve spent much of today in the state I was in Thursday, either an aimless zombie or napping.
I don’t think it’s from the ECT. I think it’s just stress and depression.
Heh. “Just” stress and depression, as if that’s not much at all.
Actually I feel like hell.
At this point I’m starting to hope the lightning does burn away some memories.
"Get to work!"
Yesterday proved to be a very interesting counterpoint to the day before.
Whereas Thursday I’d been fogged in and unfocused, after my ECT session Friday I went home and became nothing but focused.
Actually, it started earlier than that. For the second night in a row I slept terribly, my mind racing with thoughts of recent sadness. It just wouldn’t shut up. By three I was fully awake and couldn’t get back to sleep.
But after suffering a while longer, I realized something. My thoughts weren’t just a stream-of-consciousness parade of feelings and memories, they were self-organizing. My mind was composing sentences and paragraphs, actually editing each thought, polishing it up before moving to the next. I hadn’t planned to write anything more about my heartbreak, but my mind clearly disagreed and wasn’t going to leave me alone until I did. I got up and started trying to capture those thoughts, and as I wrote my mind calmed; it had my attention now, it no longer had to yell.
I wrote until it was time to get ready to go to ECT.
When I got back home, I started writing again, shaping all my thoughts into a blog post. I didn’t stop until deep into the evening. The result was a post nearly 3,500 words long (this from the guy who has trouble making 500-1,000 words a day). And it’s a pretty damn good post. I may even post it here, but not right now.
I have, at times in the past, written in journals to deal with tough times, but as far as I remember this is the first time my mind has insisted I do so. And it helped somewhat, especially while I was actually writing, focused on getting everything down. I’m still hurting though; that’s going to take a while to heal.
My brain kept me awake ruminating on the hurts of the past few weeks, then forced me to write as a way of coping. For a writer, that’s not a bad sign. Perhaps it’s a signal that what’s going on in there right now, sparked by the ECT, is reawakening or reorganizing the parts of my mind that make me a writer in the first place. Maybe it cleared some rubble from the passageways and it’s easier to move around in there again. Or maybe my mind just did what it had to do to keep me from imploding fully into despair.
I’m still depressed. I’m still heartbroken. But I wrote. Was it because of the ECT? I don’t know.
Or, to make the reference accurate, Frankenstein’s monster. But that doesn’t have the same ring.
I am just back from my second ECT session, in which they are trying to use lightning to spark life out of that which is dead, meaning my vitality and joy and ability to live fully. So far, we’re lacking an “IT’S ALIVE!” moment, but here’s hoping. We are still at the beginning.
Today wasn’t much different than Wednesday. The biggest difference was the nurse did a worse job putting in the IV and had to dig around a bit to get the catheter properly in the vein. Good times.
So far today I’m more clear-headed and alert than I was yesterday (described here). It’ll be interesting to see how I am tomorrow, if my brain seems to be motoring at a lower RPM, or if yesterday was just a temporary adjustment, if related to the ECT at all.
This footage of the natural world by Terje Sorgjerd is one of the most beautiful and genuinely awe-inspiring things I’ve ever seen. (Thanks to Angel Leigh McCoy)
Aimless Tim
I suspect it has something to do with my brain reacting to yesterday’s lightning strike, but I am utterly useless today.
I’m unfocused. I don’t feel like going anywhere, or watching anything, or reading, or playing a video game. Unfortunately that leaves me spinning pointlessly through the internet on and on and on, not paying much attention. I have far too much day to spend dwelling on things I need to forget.
Well, there’s a reason they don’t let you drive while in ECT treatment. I guess while the brain works to fix things, it’s burning energy that normally would go to other things, like having an attention span or rational thought. I’m managing to write this, but I’m not really focused on it, and the writing’s slow.
I’m still gung-ho, though. This is kinda an adventure.
Survived.
It wasn’t nearly as harrowing as I expected.
They had me fill out some forms (“I agree that if my cerebellum sizzles like a frying egg, I absolve the cook from all responsibility…”). They encouraged me to empty my bladder, and recommended I put on a Depends diaper because sometimes people wet themselves when they’re on the muscle relaxants. I opted for no diaper. I’d expected to have to don a gown, but they let me keep my clothes on. Continue reading
When I’m writing this, I’m up way too early Monday morning. But when it appears on my blog Wednesday morning, I will be at the ZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAP lab, possibly already riding the lightning.
To commemorate this first session (which I’ll try to blog about afterward), here’s some AC/DC.
Thanks to all my friends who are with me in spirit as I undergo this treatment…
If you’ve been with the blog a while, you’ll be aware of my depression. It cripples my daily life, and I’ve suffered with it since I was a kid. Wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I realized something was wrong, and I’ve been battling it off and on through various means ever since. Tomorrow I do the biggy, ECT, electroconvulsive therapy, and they’ll knock me out and strap me down and zap some lightning through my brain, hopefully stimulating my hippocampus to do its fucking job.
I’m actually looking forward to it.
A few people, even online friends I don’t actually know, have made a point of being supportive and positive, both in this endeavor and my struggle in general. Thank you. It means a lot to me. I’m completely out of touch with my father and paternal family by choice, and my mother died when I was a baby and I haven’t been in touch with her family since my late teens. Isolation is one of the demons depression sics on its victims, and my friends have fallen away from me one by one over the years, leaving a few I rarely see. The only friend who is around often (and is going to drive me back and forth to the ECT sessions, because you’re not allowed to drive immediately after one) is my ex-wife. And though I walk a tunnel in which I rarely see a light at the end, my son burns bright enough to keep the walls from closing in entirely.
In September ’04, during one extended and rough depressive time, I sent an email to a couple of friends asking for help. I’ve decided to post it, in its entirety, for the sake of those who don’t really know what depression is. It might give you some insight into the life of someone you know, and if you’re stalwart and true, you can stand by them and help. Continue reading
Fat man sitting on a little stool
Takes the money from my hand while his eyes take a walk all over you
Hands me the ticket smiles and whispers good luck
Cuddle up angel cuddle up my little dove
We’ll ride down baby into this tunnel of love
I can feel the soft silk of your blouse
And them soft thrills in our little fun house
Then the lights go out and it’s just the three of us
You me and all that stuff were so scared of
Gotta ride down baby into this tunnel of love
There’s a crazy mirror showing us both in 5-d
I’m laughing at you you’re laughing at me
There’s a room of shadows that gets so dark brother
Its easy for two people to lose each other in this tunnel of love
It ought to be easy ought to be simple enough
Man meets woman and they fall in love
But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough
And you’ve got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above if you want to ride on down in through this tunnel of love…
Recently I’ve blogged about my attempts to optimize my approach to writing day to day, to hopefully become more productive and prolific. A huge part of that, by necessity, is that I have to deal with my depression; if I can’t, I might as well throw in the towel.
This week, I start a course of ECT (electroconvulsive therapy), which will hopefully give me the edge in that fight. I’m assuming it will, so I’m working on setting the stage for the writing I plan once it’s over.
Kate gave me a book about writing for my birthday, Chapter By Chapter by Heather Sellers. Generally I find books about writing to be a waste of time for a writer; most of them say essentially the same things, and once you’ve read one, you’ve pretty much read the rest. If you’re trying to be a writer, your time is better spent writing than reading about writing. Till now, I’ve recommended only two books to writers looking for advice, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and On Writing by Stephen King.
Chapter By Chapter is now on that list, and not just because it came to me via hot redhead. Kate chose well; Sellers has some fresh perspectives on the work, and her book has been useful to me as I try to figure these things out.
One chapter proved pertinent to this post, the one about “positioning.” Sellers defines positioning as preparing to do the work, mentally and physically, in advance, so that when it’s time to get to work you can just sit down and write. Part of this is making a routine of connecting with your project every evening, thinking about the next day’s writing, staying involved. The other part of it is making sure you’re physically set up in advance so you don’t have to waste time gathering materials and setting up when you sit down to write again. Continue reading
I have the go-ahead from my psychiatrist, and just got off the phone with the ECT clinic.
Next Wednesday morning, I start my lightning ride.
If we can stand up
When all else falls down
We’ll last through the winter
We’ll last through the storms
We’ll last through the north winds
That bring down the ice and snow
We’ll last through the long nights
Till the green field’s growing again
Growing again…(Peter Gabriel w/ Kate Bush)
Death is always with me.
I think I first met her Christmas Eve, 1965. I was still a season short of two years old, living in Missouri with my mom who had fled back to her parents’ home to escape my father’s jealousy and rage. My mom’s name was Linda, and she was 16.
She was working that night, I think waitressing or as a cashier…it’s been decades since I heard the story, and have no one to ask now. But I do think she was working in a restaurant of some sort. And she took a ride home with a coworker. Home to spend Christmas with her family. With her baby. With me.
She never got there. Another driver–I think it was a woman–slammed into the car and my mom was ripped from my life forever.
I don’t remember her. I vaguely recall photos of her, but have none, as they’re in my father’s possession and I’m years out of contact with him. She was a cute young Italian girl with a nice smile and lots of long dark hair.
For most of my youth, I didn’t realize the impact her death had on me, except for the fact it put me in the path of a couple of incredibly damaging step-monsters, and left me in the hands of my mean-ass drunken father.
But as far back as I can recall, my greatest fear has been the loss of a loved one. Continue reading
Thought of these Paul Simon lyrics last night, and they touched me through my pain…
And I see losing love Is like a window in your heart Everybody sees you're blown apart Everybody feels the wind blow
For those who might have been curious about my reference to Swamp Witch Hattie in my last post, here’s Jim Stafford’s creepy classic…
I love witches.
If the embedded version isn’t working for you, here’s a direct link.
Okay, I survived the ECT evaluation.
The people were nice, and the info I received gave me some peace of mind regarding the odds of my brain being permanently fucked up. The damage tends to be short term memory loss, and it usually goes away within a few weeks of treatment. There is always a danger that you’ll be one of the unlucky, but that’s life, and my life in its current state isn’t something to hold onto.
I need to make a change, and none of the other methods seem to work. ECT has the highest success rate of any treatment for depression, somewhere around 90% if I recall my initial reading. Antidepressants have less than 50%.
At my best, I’m very capable. I do things well. I tend to the details (I vacuum, when I vacuum, under the furnishings and in the corners, not just in the middle of things), and I do things right (like my writing, which I pride myself on making as close to copy-editor proof as possible). I’m outgoing and genial and people like me. I’m playful and goofy. And I am one damn fine dancer.
Unfortunately, my depression robs me of all that. Continue reading
In three hours, I’m supposed to be at Emory for my ECT evaluation.
Shock treatment.
It’s fucking scary. I keep having the impulse to call and cancel, or to at least reschedule. This is not going to be a pleasant process. I may not be the same at the other end of it. Of course, that’s the point…I was the same after I did the full TMS course with Brian Teliho, so that was an expensive failure. But I may not be able to write when I’m done…I may not be able to spell, I may not have the same vocabulary, I may not be able to make those twisty mental leaps which tap out on the screen so magically.
I may forget things. I may lose memories of my son. I may remember little of my wonderful times with Kate, since recent memories are usually the ones most affected. I may forget the holographic sense of the stories I have in my mind, and never be able to regain it in order to write them.
But as I think of calling it off, or putting it off, I have the concomitant thoughts that I can double down on my efforts to get things done. Hey, if I make myself go the gym every day, for real this time, the resulting vitality and health will get me to the point I can write regularly too. And I can eat better. And make a point of sleeping better…
And I’ve (not) done this a few thousand times already.
Scary.
I want to thank those friends who’ve contacted me through the hard times of late. I feel alone a lot of the time, and that meant a lot.
Under An Outlaw Moon 