I found out today that someone on one of the forums I frequent had killed himself.  I didn’t really have much contact with this person.  I’d seen his posts, we’d interacted a few times, but mostly he was just a screen name and an icon to me.  He apparently had made quite a difference on the forum, but I hadn’t really known him well or crossed paths with him much.  For all intents and purposes it was almost like hearing a stranger had died. Except this strangers was, however peripherally, someone I’d known.

Mostly, when I hear someone is depressed and committed suicide I think what most people do,  some variation of “how sad” and “what a waste”.  I don’t generally let it go much deeper than that.  Underneath the sincere “how sad” lurks  the twin specters of “it could have been you” and “thank god it wasn’t me”.  Neither is a comfortable thought.

I don’t talk about my dark year much because there aren’t words to convey the depths of despair that I experienced.  I literally didn’t care whether I lived or died.  Dying seemed easier and infinitely preferable.  I didn’t see how I could get out of the pain I was in, and I didn’t think there would ever be a light that could dispel my darkness.

I wish I could say I knew why I’m still alive today, but I really don’t.  Maybe it was grace or fate or maybe it was luck.  Something kept me going and eventually something got me well.  Maybe I was just too stubborn to give in.  I’ve certainly been accused of stubbornness in the past.

If you’ve never experienced it, I’m not sure I can convey what absolute, total, utter darkness of the soul feels like.  I can talk about being smothered in a blanket of sadness and drowning in a dark pool of gloom and those would be poetical and strangely beautiful descriptions, but they wouldn’t even come close to describing what it’s like.  The nearest I can come to describing it is to tell you to imagine the flatline on a heart monitor.  That’s what it’s like.  No life, no sound, no laughter, no hope.  Just a long flat line and a monotonous beep that seems as though it will go on forever without changing.  It’s no wonder that sometimes the darkness wins.

Tonight as I sit here in my still new house, after making a nice dinner and doing my strength training, I’m alternately sad for this poor man I barely knew and consumed with gratitude that I didn’t end up like him.  It seems odd to be so sad for someone else and so happy for myself, but that’s how it is.  Sometimes the darkness wins.

Sometimes.

It didn’t, however, get me.

I went to the new condo for the first time as the new owner yesterday. I wasn’t sure what I’d feel. As it turned out, what I felt was pretty much equal parts excitement and raw panic. I had a panic attack in fact. Heart racing, dizzy, scared that I was going into afib; that kind of attack. Luckily everything settled down and I felt much better in a while.

Sometimes I get very frustrated with myself. I know the reasons why these things happen, I can give you chapter and verse on why my brain and my emotions do what they do. I just can’t make them stop doing it.

In this case, the simple explanation is fear. When I had my bad year I was in a hole so dark and deep that it sometimes seemed the only way I’d come out of it was if I died. When I finally did come out of it, and I was on the other side, I made a decision, subconsciously I guess, that the best way to avoid going back into the hole was to build a life of moderation. I’ve written about that before.

Over the years I suppose I came to believe that the safest route was the route that didn’t tempt Fate or God or the Universe or whomever or whatever it was that seemed to be out to get me. I don’t claim my thought process is logical or even rational, but that didn’t matter. For me it seemed to make sense.

Then life started going fairly well. I got a good job. I made some good friends. I started working on some new projects that had a lot of potential. I bought a house. Suddenly my life had a lot of good in it and the basement dweller in me, the one who never wants to rock the boat, surged to the fore, terrified that all this good was only going to bring on a deluge of bad.

This of course led to the panic attack of last evening. When I can think rationally about having my own place, I’m over the moon. I’ll have privacy. I’ll have my own washer and dryer. I’ll have my very own deck where I can have my very own patio furniture and grill. Ill have pretty much all the stuff I always wanted and I very much want to enjoy it without fearing that the universe will try and “get” me because I’ve dared to fly too high.

I guess, in this case at least, it is a case of reality or mind. In reality, there is no force in the universe that is out to get me. In reality, you don’t have to pay for any good you receive by enduring some bad. Vengeful Gods exist only in mythology, and that’s just a bunch of stories. I just need to keep telling myself this.

After all, I’m expecting the Universe to bring on a lot more good.

I don’t talk much about my lost year. Truth is, I try not to think about my lost year. That year was such a sink of hopelessness and darkness and I really don’t remember many of the events of that year. Mostly what I remember is how hard everything seemed and how little I cared about whether tomorrow came. I couldn’t see how things would ever get better. I pretty much given up caring if they did.

Thankfully I haven’t had any times that dark since then. I have my moments, even my days and weeks where I feel a little down, or a little dark around the edges, but I bounce back. I know not to let myself get too stressed, or to allow myself to feel too trapped. I know that a down day will pass. I know that feeling a little blue is only temporary. I know all this, and yet feeling a little depressed still scares the living crap out of me. I’m don’t want to sink again. I’m not sure I’d make it back to the top this time.

The last few days I have been a little blue. It’s a combination of things. It has been very hot and humid here which is not my favorite weather combination. There may be a delay in moving into my new condo. I’ve taken on a couple of new projects and I don’t feel that I’m getting as much done as I want to get done. . My job is in a slow period and I don’t feel like I’m accomplishing much. I’m making strides to be more social, but I haven’t miraculously developed a whole pack of best friends forever. I feel like my life lately has been a lot of slog and not much sunshine.

I know this feeling will pass. I’m aware of how much good there is in my life and how much opportunity still lies before me. I also know that I’m taking steps to correct the things in my life with which I am dissatisfied. The sunshine will, perhaps unfortunately for the heat index, come out tomorrow and life will be good. I know this and, more importantly, I believe this.

Still, just for tonight, my world feels a little dark around the edges.

Tomorrow is, however, another day.

In December of last year I wrote a post, “Dancing with the Dark“  in which I spoke about what I call my “lost year”.  This was a year in which I was so profoundly depressed that I didn’t really care whether I lived or died.  I’m quite convinced that the only reason I didn’t die is that I didn’t have the motivation to take my own life.  I was quite simply numb. 

Once I started to come out of my lost year I made a decision.  My theory, flawed though it may have been, was that too much of anything, happiness or sadness, could lead to another bout with depression.  My plan was to build a life that was  study in moderation.  I would never be too happy, never be too sad and never face the risk that the darkness would envelop me again.  At the time it seemed like a good path to follow. 

The problem, as I mentioned in my other post, was that I never could succeed in keeping out the sad stuff.  I got fired.  I had to have surgery.  My mother got cancer and died.  The sad just kept coming and I dealt with it, absorbed the pain and moved on.  Sad, apparently, didn’t have the same power over me that it used to have.

The drawback of my plan for a moderate life was that it kept all the joy out of my life.  I didn’t laugh for the sheer wonderfulness of being alive.  I didn’t have one afternoon where I was gloriously, hopelessly in love wiht the man of my dreams.  I didn’t risk, so I didn’t know the exhilaration of having a risk pay off.  In my attempt to be moderate, I blocked all the happy while completely failing to keep out the sad.  In short, my plan was a failure.

Now I’m working to rebuild my life, and I realize I have a choice to make.  I can, if I choose, stick to the moderate path and have a safe, and mostly o.k. life.  It won’t be the life of my dreams, but it will probably hold less opportunity to fall into the dark abyss again.  This sort of life won’t be the most appealing, but it would probably be the most safe.

My other option, should I choose to take it, is to live the life I want, which would mean taking some risks.  It would mean opening myself up to the feelings and the people I’ve so carefully kept outside my barricades.  Taking chances would mean I would certainly face some deep sadness, but it also brings the possibility that I could face deep joy. 

What it comes down to is this.  When I die, however many years from now that may be, I don’t want my life to simply fade.  I want to have stood for something, to have been valued and to value the people in my life.  I want to have one perfect afternoon when I was hopelessly in love, and one purposeful moment when I realized I was doing what I was put here to do. 

The choice is simple:  safe life or great life.

If you were me, which would you choose?

I’ve been sick for over a month now.  Perhaps it would be more accurate to say I’ve been in varying stages of sick.  There was very sick, and there was kind of sick, and now there is mostly well except for this annoying tendency toward not being able to breathe every once in a while.  I haven’t slept really well (see the not breathing thing) or felt really well since before Christmas. 

Since I haven’t been feeling or sleeping well, I’m also not handling  other areas of my life as well as I would like.  My work annoys and irritates me more than it should.  I let things to which I should be attending slide.  I make plans and don’t follow through.  I mostly want to spend time holed up in my apartment reading or watching television.  I really don’t want to think about my life or myself or anything more weighty or portentous than what I might have for lunch.  Most of the time I don’t even want to make that decision, so I just have a bagel.

For those of you who might be wondering, all of these things are warning signs.  When I get overstressed, or overtired, or sick for too long, the chemicals in my brain that say “be happy” seem to take a bit of a hiatus.  Things that would normally bring me joy and satisfaction like, for instance, writing this blog, become chores, and ones I’ll happily ignore if I can.   I stop believing in the possibility of change, and start feeling mired in the dark, trapped in the gluey mud of my present circumstances, held in place by all the things I don’t like. 

Luckily, I know the signs, and I know what to do if this sort of thing goes on too long.  Taking a break every once in a while is fine.  Holing up for the odd day or weekend to recharge is great and necessary.  Avoiding a chore that doesn’t absolutely have to be done that day can be freeing.  Doing any of those things for too many days means the dark is tapping on my shoulder and asking me to take a spin around the floor.

The good news is that I can decline to dance.  I know that the dull, grey place where I live right now is temporary.  I know I will start to feel better.  I know I can change the things about myself and about my life that displease me.  I have that power.   The dark only has the power that I give it. 

Luckily, as long as I remember that, the dark doesn’t have any power at all.

When I was 23 or 24, mercifully most of that period is a blur so I can’t assign an exact age, I lost a year.  I always call it that because it sounds nicer than saying I sunk into a depression so profound that I didn’t care if I lived or died.  I didn’t even have the motivation to make myself die, which is probably the reason I’m writing this today.  It wasn’t so much that I wanted to die, it was simply that too many things came crashing in on me and years of denial and pain surfaced and I just paused.  Like pressing the button on your DVD player and freezing the picture, I just stopped. 

Eventually, whatever pushed the pause button eased up.  I did not take drugs.  I didn’t go to therapy.  I just gradually started rebuilding my life and started moving again.  I’m still not quite sure how and why, but it did happen.

When I started rebuilding my life, the one thing I knew was that I never, ever, wanted to lose another year.  So, I started developing a strategy to ensure that wouldn’t happen.  First, I tried therapy.  That wasn’t a big success.  Next, I decided that I would simply build a nice safe little life.  I would build my barriers and I wouldn’t get too happy and I wouldn’t get too sad.  Basically, my life would be like oatmeal, probably good for you, and sort of satisfying, but really just bland.

Looking back now, the funny thing is that I thought I could actually build a life like that and it would work.  The problem is that it didn’t.  I left a secure job for a new job and got fired.  My mom got cancer.  I had to have heart surgery.  My mom died of cancer.  There were no barriers I could build that would keep the bad or sad things out.  Regardless of what I did, they kept showing up anyway.

The sad thing was that the barriers I built did keep out the good things in my life.  I limited my friendships because getting involved with people make demands on your emotions, and I wasn’t sure I could handle that.  I certainly wasn’t about to fall in love.  I never got too excited or too happy or had one perfect day where everything was just sublime.  In my quest to keep the dark away, which it became apparent I couldn’t do, I also shut out the light.

When you’ve lived with the darkness,  you always know that it might come back.  Depression runs on both sides of my family.   It’s part of our chemistry, like an artistic streak, or a love of reading.  Some of us are more prone to it  than others, and I seem to be one of those.  Nothing has, I’m pleased to say, been as bad as my lost year, I’m smarter now, and I know how to take care of myself better, and I also know the signs that the dark is trying to make a comeback. Still, the dark is always there, holding out a hand and asking me to take another turn around the floor.  That’s just how it is.

I suppose the best way to combat the dark is to let the light shine in.  I tried building a careful little life, and didn’t succeed in keeping the bad things out.  I just succeeded at failing to let the good things in.  Maybe, if I take some chances, the dark will get to take me for a spin again. 

Then again, maybe it won’t. 

I’m smarter now, and I’ve learned a few new steps of my own.