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I have pumpkin bread in the oven; maybe if we're lucky, Devon will use it to make cream cheese-stuffed pumpkin bread French toast this weekend. So with that good, some bad.
A few days ago Devon and I watched the Star Trek: Voyager episode Extreme Risk, an episode about depression and self-harm which just made me want to punch something. Consider it the antithesis of Doctor Who's Vincent and the Doctor (which I rambled on here), because what Voyager lacks is permanence: sure, they never forget that Neelix has just one lung, but near every episode a cast member goes through something traumatic and every next episode they've forgotten it all—not because there's no continuity, but because it remains episodic. And it should—if all the PTSD did accumulate, it'd be one hell of a depressing show—but it still has a deleterious effect on everything that they try to take seriously. The episode doesn't give B'Elanna a magical breakthrough, except that it does: in a week, it's as if it never happened. No lasting effects, all problems healed, no one dies at the end. Issues-of-the-week are well-intended and even the maudlin ones can be successful, but this one was not only Othering, it was heartbreaking: ah, of only I could forget in a week.
And then yesterday, Hyperbole and a Half posted Adventures in Depression, which was like a kick in the gut. As I explained it to Devon, there are something like four groups of people: Group 0 is never experiences major depression. Group 1 experiences depression with some sort of external cause, and gets over it when that cause resolves or passes. Group 2 experiences depression with no external cause, and gets over it when the episode passes or through treatment. Group 3 experiences depression with no external cause, and continue to experience depression in some form or another indefinitely. These definitions aren't absolute; in reality groups overlap or aren't groups at all. Depression also isn't a competition: having a cause doesn't make a depressive episode any better or worse, and overcoming it doesn't make your experience more or less meaningful. Group 3 doesn't "win."
But as better as I am these days—and I am—I have weeks like those in the last two which remind me that my version of "better" can often be everyone else's version of "not very good at all," and that isn't going to change. I'm in Group 3. I'm not doing all that I could to help myself, I'm not in therapy or on medication, but my non-life is basically as good as it's going to get. Despite that, I will always be sick. I will always backslide.
Allie hasn't had a Lifetime Movie breakthrough because those moments don't exist. Breakthroughs, such as they are, are arbitrary and small, and far from magical; even if they occur, they are hardly the end of the journey. Her experiences aren't lesser than mine. I don't win the misery Olympics. But it still stings like a bitch to know that I haven't had my bike ride of pseudo-victory, and I probably never will. It stings even more after such an accurate depiction of depression, because yes, it is like that; and while it's no longer that bad for me every single day, I know that any day in the future could be that bad and there's shit all that I can do about it.
I think there's nothing to jinx when I say am doing better, now. I wiped myself out just making dinner yesterday, so "better" still may not be saying much, but some of my energy and a fair bit of my joy are back, and I'm looking forward to celebrating Halloween and seeing Devon this weekend. The pumpkin bread smells fantastic. But I was feeling like utter shite for a fair few days back there, and this for me is indicative of so much. I'm the issue of the week. I'm the problem without a solution, the breakthrough that never does plan to come, the unforgotten traumatic event. That sounds pathetic, and self-centered, and it is. But it's also true, and the reminders of that which keep on popping up simply hurt.
A few days ago Devon and I watched the Star Trek: Voyager episode Extreme Risk, an episode about depression and self-harm which just made me want to punch something. Consider it the antithesis of Doctor Who's Vincent and the Doctor (which I rambled on here), because what Voyager lacks is permanence: sure, they never forget that Neelix has just one lung, but near every episode a cast member goes through something traumatic and every next episode they've forgotten it all—not because there's no continuity, but because it remains episodic. And it should—if all the PTSD did accumulate, it'd be one hell of a depressing show—but it still has a deleterious effect on everything that they try to take seriously. The episode doesn't give B'Elanna a magical breakthrough, except that it does: in a week, it's as if it never happened. No lasting effects, all problems healed, no one dies at the end. Issues-of-the-week are well-intended and even the maudlin ones can be successful, but this one was not only Othering, it was heartbreaking: ah, of only I could forget in a week.
And then yesterday, Hyperbole and a Half posted Adventures in Depression, which was like a kick in the gut. As I explained it to Devon, there are something like four groups of people: Group 0 is never experiences major depression. Group 1 experiences depression with some sort of external cause, and gets over it when that cause resolves or passes. Group 2 experiences depression with no external cause, and gets over it when the episode passes or through treatment. Group 3 experiences depression with no external cause, and continue to experience depression in some form or another indefinitely. These definitions aren't absolute; in reality groups overlap or aren't groups at all. Depression also isn't a competition: having a cause doesn't make a depressive episode any better or worse, and overcoming it doesn't make your experience more or less meaningful. Group 3 doesn't "win."
But as better as I am these days—and I am—I have weeks like those in the last two which remind me that my version of "better" can often be everyone else's version of "not very good at all," and that isn't going to change. I'm in Group 3. I'm not doing all that I could to help myself, I'm not in therapy or on medication, but my non-life is basically as good as it's going to get. Despite that, I will always be sick. I will always backslide.
Allie hasn't had a Lifetime Movie breakthrough because those moments don't exist. Breakthroughs, such as they are, are arbitrary and small, and far from magical; even if they occur, they are hardly the end of the journey. Her experiences aren't lesser than mine. I don't win the misery Olympics. But it still stings like a bitch to know that I haven't had my bike ride of pseudo-victory, and I probably never will. It stings even more after such an accurate depiction of depression, because yes, it is like that; and while it's no longer that bad for me every single day, I know that any day in the future could be that bad and there's shit all that I can do about it.
I think there's nothing to jinx when I say am doing better, now. I wiped myself out just making dinner yesterday, so "better" still may not be saying much, but some of my energy and a fair bit of my joy are back, and I'm looking forward to celebrating Halloween and seeing Devon this weekend. The pumpkin bread smells fantastic. But I was feeling like utter shite for a fair few days back there, and this for me is indicative of so much. I'm the issue of the week. I'm the problem without a solution, the breakthrough that never does plan to come, the unforgotten traumatic event. That sounds pathetic, and self-centered, and it is. But it's also true, and the reminders of that which keep on popping up simply hurt.
