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There is room in the halls of pleasure
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Go to PART 2: May to May
Go to: Journal
When life leaves us feeling seriously down something goes wrong with chemical responses in the brain – a sort of communication problem. We've got neurotransmitters that normally keep billions of brain cells talking to one another. If something breaks down (!) we can get treatment that gets the chemicals busy again. So, we'll feel a good bit better? Not necessarily. And there's always the threat of drug dependence.
Pressure can be relentless. Worry endless. Distress, annoyance and frustration can pile into your life at every turn. There are times when unusual circumstances can gather themselves into a lengthy storm. I'm convinced these popular drugs don't make much of an impression on problem-solving when the difficulties we face are huge and mounting up. But medication may indeed save us from total despair and suicidal tendencies. As my doctor said: "They should take the edge of things." Fair enough.
Positive attitudes won't really change life forces that are beyond our control. I'm speaking from considerable experience here. I’m convinced that daily life is largely a series of random events played out in a volatile and unsafe universe. We are constantly forced to solve problems big and small. Sometimes it seems life resists and frustrates us at every turn.
If we are remarkably unfortunate we find there is too much to deal with. Grappling continually with very trying circumstances will eventually wear most of us down. It's just a fact regardless of our approach or religious beliefs. When you've been throttled over and over like this you have to be realistic. The Glass of Life is neither half empty nor half full – it’s just the way Life is.*
Life became too much for me. My mind started to lose it. My father had died under distressing circumstances. On the very day he was buried my wife accidentally discovered a cancerous tumour on her leg (melanoma). Then I took ill with a very painful complaint that lasted for 2 weeks and I ended up in A&E playing second fiddle to the needs of alcohol victims.
After her operation my wife responded very badly to Interferon and had to be hospitalised for several days. In October 2007 halfway through a holiday her cancer returned. We cut our break short and set off for home the next day. My wife made an appointment with her doctor on the way. All this happened in just 9 months. Finally, in August 2008 after many more operations my devoted wife gradually slipped into unconsciousness and left me.
Where Depression Meets Grief
Life broke me like it was an evil living Being I couldn't escape from. There was nothing I could do to fight back. I felt powerless. This monster kicked the door in and heaped misery on me month after month. I had watched my father die. The following year I watched my wife die. What I had to see and hear will never leave me. It was truly dreadful.
She had been an essential part of my life for 31 years. I was deeply distressed. I lost a mountain of love I'd too often taken for granted, a love that never once turned away, a faithful love I will never experience again. I leaned on her and loved her much, much more than I realised. Life quickly became meaningless.
Then I took ill again and was in quite a lot of pain for almost two full months.
I'm not looking for sympathy here, but it's so hard to find words to explain what this inner turmoil is like. It cuts every way you could imagine. If you've been there you'll know how dreadful it gets. Here I was at 49, very much in love with a woman who no longer existed, and I had no idea how to live without her. At first I found I was clueless and spent most of my days totally off-balance in a mental wilderness.
Four months later my terrible loss remains ugly and tangible, immense, even weightier than the choking mass of agitated emotions and thoughts that roll over me without warning. It's suffocating. C. S. Lewis lost his wife to cancer too. Her passing shattered his entire world. He would never be the same. He wrote: "The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything" (A Grief Observed). That's how it is. The magnitude of it all crushes me, keeps me awake.
I kept wishing for Somebody to come along. I desperately needed a special Someone to draw alongside in a remarkable way, a real flesh and blood Person to bring comfort and support. I still need to be fully inside out with Somebody to soak up a selfless love that would help raw wounds heal. I'm still waiting, though now I don't know why.
I can't describe the unique loneliness bereavement has mercilessly dumped on me. It's not what you might expect. It's not like simply being on your own. It cuts much deeper, even when in company, even when my precious daughter and mother are in the same room. You see, that one special person has left me completely – no one at any time can fully take her place, and I need her so much. She can't be found anywhere in the entire universe, so the overwhelming isolation eats through everything I know, everywhere I am.
This formidable reality crushes me without warning. It's so hard. I've listened to myself sobbing and wailing uncontrollably. I talk to her, I talk to God. I tell her I miss her so badly and that I didn't deserve her in my life. I tell God over and over I don't want to go on – I feel I've lived long enough. At times I’ve wished I could do something to stop my heart beating – if only to shut down my thoughts.
If I found a switch on the wall that would snuff me out in a puff of smoke I would reach out for it and just disappear – no afterlife. Nothing more to live with, blissful or cruel. No more anything, just complete unawareness, and I'm experiencing this even with my Christian faith surviving these terrible storms. My mind doesn't work the way I'd like it to.
It’s good to believe God’s love is there, eternal beyond life’s end. A great many do. But love is also a sacrificial visit. Love is an arm around your shoulder, a mature hand that dares to touch a tear. Love is a phone call. Love can be as small as a timely text message. Love isn’t shallow gestures or meaningless gifts. I now need the kind of love I often failed to show those who mattered most. I wonder if sometimes we deserve what we don’t get.
I have her hair in an envelope, her coats and books in a cupboard. In a drawer by the bed I keep her mobile phone and her journal and a collection of loving notes she wrote for me. The last thing she wrote in hospital just four days before the end was, "But I'm not dead yet." She clung on to life, to me, to us. I can't believe she's gone. The unthinkable has happened. I can't go back in time and make the most of things. Often I look at some of my photographs and realise she was there beside me at that moment. I wish I could go back, turn away from my camera and hug her again, hold her tight.
I deliberately see her walking across the landing (where she collapsed) and going into the bedroom. I ask her again if she's all right. I see her getting ready for bed. I hear her whispering my name if she needs me through the night. I'd give everything I have just to hold her close, to take her face in my hands. I have no intimacy. Love is so painful. It cuts you up when it turns into something cruel you never expected.
Kind and thoughtful friends say to me, "You have happy memories. Think about those things." But this reveals to me what they haven't been through. Those good memories bring me heartbreak and make me feel like crying again. We loved walking together but I can't walk in those places anymore. She chose to be buried in her favourite walking shoes partly because she knew how hard it would have been for me to look at them someday.
Time may change how I feel when I have reinvented my normality, if I can. I don't know, but for now the happiness of past experiences tears through my thoughts and personality like barbed hooks. And following behind are the smallest of regrets magnified into real burdens I'm forced to live with forever. I'm a different person. Life has been devalued.
Sometimes getting through is as much as I can do. My future's greyed out as far as I can imagine it and doesn't appeal to me at all. But I get my own back on Life. It may attack whenever it pleases, but at times, if only out of spite, I can still be loving and kind to others to make sure good things still happen on this discouraging journey.
Gradually Worn Down
We may deal with one situation with all the strength we possess only to be hit full on by another, and another, and another… It's unusual but it happens. Eventually it's impossible to get ahead mentally so we reach the point where we can't make sense of things anymore. There's no coherence. It all comes unstuck. We can't come up with an effective response that gets us back on track. Bit by bit life becomes unmanageable, and no amount of induced chemical activity in the brain will ever change the external circumstances that threaten to pound us into the dust.
Recently I was talking to someone about random events and relentless pressure. It came to me that it was like lifting a really heavy box off the floor onto a table. Then you're told to put it back down on the floor again. Then, immediately, you have to pick it up and put it on the table. Then it has to go back on the floor. Then back on the table. It's heavy, awkward. After ten lifts you really start to feel the strain, but you're not allowed to stop. Nobody can help. After 20 lifts you ache badly. At 30 you shake with the effort. Eventually you can't do it again. It just becomes impossible. You've nothing left to give.
Imagine that in a mental context, if you need to. It's where I was. It's where a lot of people are, and I know some of them are working their way through dreadful situations worse than mine. Have you been there recently? No relief. No help. No change. No solutions. Nothing left inside to help you grapple with the next problem, no matter how small. It might be cleaning the sink or cutting the grass. Even interaction with those you love seems too removed from where you are. There's no peace or release.
Virgil, a poet from ancient Rome, wrote, “Trust one who has gone through it.” Over the years I've noticed that few have patience for the mental disabilities of others. It's best if they have been there themselves. Then they'll appreciate the sense of helplessness.
If you see someone lying in a hospital bed with broken arms and a smashed collarbone, you'll easily connect with his painful, debilitating condition. You won't say, "Look at you lying there! What on earth's wrong with you? For goodness' sake get up! Be a man and get on with your life!" If someone's very badly broken up on the inside, in the mind where it doesn't show, he's less likely to get constructive input and the empathy he deserves. Many people are in foul form and feel down from time to time, frustrated by life's more typical demands. Others are truly wasted deep inside. They are very depressed. If you're not completely sure of the difference, be careful with your advice.
Of course, it doesn't help when you come across long-faced attention-seekers who clearly need a good kick up the backside. Loving support, counselling, church support teams and calming pills probably won't help drama queens who cry and cry about nothing much till they're literally dehydrated. Maybe it's important to them that others see their tears. Their doctors must dread a visit. If hard times really hit them they'd fold completely and probably be a wretched burden to somebody.
It beats me how anyone can sit with a complete stranger and pour out his heart. Maybe it's arrogance or pride but this would be demeaning for me. I came close almost by mistake. It's not always possible but at the very least the depressed person needs loving, sacrificial input. That has to be so much better than professional, clinical procedure that's earning someone a wage. Yes of course, expertise matters. It can identify depression's subtle traits. It can respond with tried and tested solutions. But that doesn't touch a life where it's hurting most. Not much can. Maybe there are times when nothing can.
I intend to never voluntarily go near anyone who's getting paid to help me sort out my upended mind. However, there was a time I'd baulk at the thought of sharing even a little personal stuff with my own GP – but I felt I could eventually. Professional detachment needn't be an impenetrable wall. I could tell she was showing a genuine concern – the eyes can’t lie – and oddly it seemed to help that she was a she. Women have an edge generally when it comes to these things.
So here I am pushing on along the road. I wonder what life has lined up for me, with its potential for sudden twists and turns, disturbing dilemmas and even more extreme ravages. If I can't see it through I'll most likely break down again until I sense I can make the next cautious move. Hopefully I'll try to take it on the chin without falling prey to the silent-type macho thing that only adds to men's miseries. (We are a sorry lot at times.) One step in front of the other is all I know. I told that to my wife over and over, so many times.
I wonder about you. What will tomorrow bring you? Please, if you're regularly spending time with someone who seems unusually down, you may need to get your own brain in gear. Are you showing a little sensitivity? Am I? Make some caring allowances. You could be next in line.
Xmas 2008
Go to PART 2: May to May
Go to: Journal
* We can be pessimistic or we can be optimistic. Even better, we can be realistic. It varies from person to person. It’s so difficult to accept at times but "the way life is" can be put another way: “What matter if life’s experiences seem disorderly and we cannot grasp what they are all about? God’s Word assures us that all things without exception work together for our good” (Watchman Nee).
