The rhetoric of depression
There are things I won’t blog about: I don’t blog about other people, really (and I try mostly to blog about myself in relation to them, when I do: my insecurities are fair game, others’, not so much); I don’t blog about work. I won’t blog about large parts of my life and history.
But beyond that, there are ways I will write about the thing which are on the yes, blog this list, there are ways I won’t. I occasionally try to change it around, though I suspect I am not too successful at that.
Some caveats:
- Although I am going to be describing things I have felt in the past, they are not all current issues: this is not a cry for help.
- I haven’t bothered to do a careful check, read up on people’s posts about depression. So all this deserves a grain — many grains — of salt. I am sure that people could find counterexamples to what I am going to say, but my impression is that the gist here is correct.
When I talk about depression, I talk about it in two ways. Sometimes I talk about it as from a distance, with a bit of perspective on it; sometimes I talk about it as I am suffering it. But when I choose the latter, I am careful what I say.
Depression is talked about, written about, has ads about it on television. Depression can be part of someone’s story, an ongoing piece of the picture, and it doesn’t bring with it the difficulty in integration that other things do. I can say I feel depressed and I get responses: people know how to respond.
Except.
Except I do not say some of it. Except I am careful about how I word it. I am tired; I am sad; I am not doing what I need to do. These are all fine and acceptable; these are the ways everyone talks about depression. I do not say how actually I hate myself. I do not say how I feel I deserve only bad things. I do not say how I feel I am such a terrible person that this badness inevitably stains anyone around me.
I do not know why I don’t talk about depression in those terms. They are at least as honest as the ones where I explain how I am dragging. It just seems like this is outside the bounds of acceptable to talk about. Too personal? Too raw? I do not know. It resides there with other things. Self-injury, say: I got very few comments until I explicitly asked for them. Too frightening? Too far outside people’s experience? Too close?
This is depression too.
Depression is frightening. Depression is walking around and not understanding a word anyone says to you. Depression is being too tired to bother to jump off a bridge. Depression is coming home with a vial of acid and dropping it on you. Depression is saving some cyanide, just in case. Depression is sleeping with a razor. Depression is not stopping yourself being hurt because better you than someone else, someone who doesn’t deserve it: maybe you’re preventing that, which means maybe you’re worth something. Depression is thinking the same things again and again and again, telling them this way or that, and getting over it only until the next 4 am, when you sit in bed staring at nothing, unable to sleep, wishing you could just stop.
This is depression too.
But these are not part of a daily blog, not really: they break up the story, they don’t integrate well. What do you do, comment saying ‘Hey, you don’t deserve that?’ How often can you comment the same way on the same thing? It gets embarassing, to the writer, to the readers. And though I blog for myself, I am not unaware that I have readers. (I am not unaware that I have readers who know me, though I don’t know who you are.) I cannot say these things matter-of-factly: they are too painful, and I have never been stoic.
I do not know why other people do not talk about these things. Perhaps not everyone feels such intense self-hatred. Perhaps it is not the important part for them. Perhaps it’s shame: I am ashamed to admit to these feelings. Perhaps it is fear that I will push people away if I admit to this. It is a risk, admitting it. What if they agree with me, tell me I am this worthless? What if they don’t?
(This will be part one in a series of more than one, eventually. Thanks to Michelle for the inspiration: the why do we talk about things in specific ways, not the ‘hey, let’s talk about intense levels of self-hatred’ bit.)
October 19th, 2005 at 6:47 pm
Wow. There’s a lot here to absorb. I’ll be back.
October 19th, 2005 at 7:36 pm
Wow indeed. Speaking for myself, I’m ashamed to talk about the really bad things (and also, my experience with depression has not been as severe as some people’s, so there’s less of it to talk about. Also in some ways I feel like a depression imposter, so to speak). While I have always managed to get out of bed in the morning, I don’t talk about the days I stood in the shower and sobbed because I couldn’t bear the prospect of going to work, or screamed - and I mean screamed - at the cats at the slightest provocation. Because I’m not supposed to be like that. Because depression seems senseless (there’s no *reason* to feel that way), and I’m all about reason and intelligence and all those academic things. Because I should be able to “get over it” and I think that I have to be perfect - without weakness - for people to like me.
I guess that’s why I don’t talk about it. FWIW.
October 19th, 2005 at 11:15 pm
[…] Wolfangel has a chewy and kinda scary post on the rhetoric of depression: I am tired; I am sad; I am not doing what I need to do. These are all fine and acceptable; these are the ways everyone talks about depression. I do not say how actually I hate myself. I do not say how I feel I deserve only bad things. I do not say how I feel I am such a terrible person that this badness inevitably stains anyone around me. […]
October 20th, 2005 at 10:25 am
I wonder if part of what we don’t talk about is b/c of shame–which is also a big part of depression. Or if it’s a sense of audience–I know that some of the things I don’t say, I don’t say b/c I don’t want to scare people, b/c I know I *feel* them, but I also on some level know they’re not true/not a real threat, and I realize readers have no way to tell the difference. Or maybe it’s both, or something else.
In any case, w/r/t being a bad person who deserves bad things: my sense of you is, and has always been, that you are thoughtful, generous, and have a fine appreciation of the beautiful–that last being a quality I particularly admire. Refined, I think, is the word. Perhaps a sense of unworthiness is part and parcel of that refinement, I don’t know. But in any case, for what it’s worth, I do not think you are a bad person who deserves bad things. I think you are a person of very high standards.
October 20th, 2005 at 11:52 am
NK, I also feel like a fake talking about this. Because — and I am trying to make this clear — not all of this is current. (Yes, some is.) And it feels like I am faking it, too: after all, I do not really cry that much; after all, I have never just dropped everything in my life, it’s always been easier to keep up whatever schedule I had before.
And it also feels like really, I have no reason for this. And in a way I guess it is true. There is — eventually — no reason for depression, it just feeds on, is caused by, itself. Of course, it is also much easier to write it on my pseudonymous blog. (Though frankly, it’s not like all my friends don’t know (scarring is, shall we say, not subtle), but it’s not like I say it in so many words.) It’s easier not to have to look at someone’s face when you say these things.
Anyways, a lot of your comments are things I want to write about — this was so different from what I intended — so I will have more to say about them too.
Dr B, yes, there’s definitely shame. And — well, your audience is a larger, more political one, so I understand why you want to avoid saying some things, or in some ways. I understand why everyone does, really. It just makes me sad, because we’re restricting depression and what it can mean, and I think that is a bad thing. But on the other hand, no one is obliged to live their lives as a teaching moment, to say more than they want to so that maybe someone will learn. Would I do the same were I writing a higher-profile blog? I don’t know.
I don’t know how much of not a real threat any of this is. It is not a real threat in the sense that no, I am not about to kill or even really harm myself. Not now. But it was in the past, and it may be in the future — I don’t know. I hope not, but life is unpredictable. I don’t know what anyone thinks from this. But I can certainly not write thoughtfully in the same way when I am too depressed, so the fact of these posts is sort of comforting, in a perverse way.
As for the bad person — well, mostly I ignore that, because no matter what I do or don’t reason, I cannot turn that bit off. I appreciate the kind words, though; they do help, sometimes.
October 20th, 2005 at 3:23 pm
Here’s another potential reason people don’t talk about depression in those terms: they think everyone feels that way and so talking about the sadness and the slowness is a kind of shorthand, one that signifies all of the bad thoughts without having to say them aloud.
This, at least, is why my darling Ms. P doesn’t often talk about the bad things, although she does now with me. She never knew other people don’t feel that way all the time.
October 20th, 2005 at 10:09 pm
True, P, that’s another possibility I didn’t consider. I don’t consider those a good shorthand for me — I’d use other things, maybe, black holes, maybe things lying in wait, I am not sure. But I also would not use them as a shorthand because it is something I do not want to talk about obliquely or accidentally (or, often, at all).