Reconciliation

January 2, 2019

West Hollywood, CA

What’s The Point?

Let me just first say that I have a decades-old diagnosis of dysthymia, which is a “mild” form of chronic depression.  I am pretty dispassionate about it because, after all, it’s just a thing I have, replete with its own set of limitations, symptoms and pitiable characteristics.  It’s hard to talk about this, because it’s sort of like complaining about the remote not working on your third garage door.   In a world where people are grappling with some serious stuff, it’s hard to catastrophize feeling blue at my comfy, ocean view condo in tony Signal Hill, California.   And there are far worse things to be sick from and certainly George and Amal Clooney are not in the early stages of organizing a telethon for me or anything, I am just offering this point up for a glum perspective of the “we all have crosses to bare” variety.  From what I can glean from other people with depression, I pretty much drive the Nissan Altima of depression, a kind of low grade annoyance, chronic and persistent with “episodes” lasting for years at a time but an illness that still allows me the freedom to use sharp objects at will and muse only perfunctorily about self-harm.  Praise be!

Now I should probably tell you that there have been times under situational stress, financial stress, career stress, work stress where it has flared up to less manageable levels and there always is that tiny dark space in the back of my brain that says “what’s the point” followed by the more ominous “why go on”?   

But that’s not today.

I think one of the key inflection points of depression,  when I ask myself the question “what’s the point?” is to ask myself “what’s really going on?”   If catastrophizing were a hobby, I’d be a grand master and quite often my actual circumstances barely mirror my perceived hardships.  Depression spreads out its picnic blanket over a large swath of territory, proclaiming its eminent domain over the far and the wide.    What’s the point of waking up? Going to work? Studying Scrabble?  Writing a book? Changing a light bulb? Changing the world?  Breathing? 

The answer depression offers is that there is no point to doing whatever elicits that thought, because honestly, YOU CAN’T MAKE A DIFFERENCE.  We’re only here for a short time, death is inevitable and if you are just an “Every Day Average Joe Lunchbox” most anything you would or wouldn’t do is but a nano-blip on the radar screen of all humanity.  And if you wait until you are old, there’s even less of a chance!   You see, you see those thoughts there?  THAT’S DEPRESSION.  Name it, claim it and slap it on the butt, that’s depression.  I feel it more profoundly when I wake up in the morning and the idealistic first thought that I will glide through my day like a hot knife through frozen butter is instantly undercut by “what’s the point” is all the evidence I need to give up before I have even hit the snooze alarm.      

So when I do ask myself the question what’s really going on, and I can clear enough shelf space in the region of my brain resistant to new thoughts, I usually find some telling ones.  And the big one here is that I am AFRAID.  I don’t know why, but I am afraid.  Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of financial insecurity, fear of people, fear of judgement.  Fear, fear, fear.  The postulate here is that I am not depressed, I am afraid. 

A recent anecdote to that….at a Scrabble Tournament in Tempe last weekend, I was playing an expert Scrabbler named Travis and I would have won the game if I played the word SKITE, which I wasn’t sure of  (it is a valid Scrabble meaning to move quickly or forcefully).  I had the option to play this word FOUR TURNS IN A ROW FOR THE VICTORY.  I wasn’t afraid of playing the WORD, I was afraid of what Travis would think of me if it wasn’t good, which is why I didn’t play it.  Afraid of someone I barely know thinking badly of me, WTF?   This fear has nothing to do with my ability at Scrabble or my worth as a person, but look at the paralysis it created.  Seriously, what’s the worst that could have happened?  The word is no good and I lose the game anyway?  So what!!!!!  In some respects, depression is a built in mechanism, handed down from my parents (let’s call it one of the worst family heirlooms imaginable).  Depression is a little valve that shields you from disappointment by disabling your ability to try.  Yikes. 

So perhaps there is no point to much of what we do.  However if it is what gives our lives meaning, even if it is only to ourselves, THAT’S the point.  No one else might give a rat’s tuchas about whether I want to be a Scrabble expert or go to all 50 states or do stand-up or play guitar, or write this blogpost but I do.  And if I want to indulge my neatly-packaged inner demons and fear what you think of me for doing this, then perhaps this is the last blog post I will write.  However, if I attempt to put the proverbial cork into my negative thinking and all the sturm-und-drang associated with it, perhaps this blog will be of some value to me – and maybe to you too. And sometimes I will geek out on Scrabble!