Archive for the ‘depression’ Category

On the Anniversary of Jim’s Suicide

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
My big brother at my wedding.

My big brother at my wedding.

Today is the first anniversary of my brother’s suicide. He planned it well: On the coffee table were copies of his will, life insurance policy, and house keys. He changed the greeting on his cell phone (“by the time you hear this message I’ll be dead”), put a plastic bag over his head, lay down on his bed, and died.

His death gutted me, just as his prior threats of suicide had in the years leading up to it.

He was a complicated figure. His best self was fantastic — alive and brilliant, curious, adventuresome, generous, thoughtful. People wanted to be around him and themselves became more alive and aware when they were with him.

I remember Jimmy as so intelligent, fun, sweet, and kind, basically the coolest cousin you could have wished for. He was such a great friend to us in the years we lived in Bedford. I will always cherish those times and will remember him forever.

Diagnosis Helps

Such is the seductiveness of narcissistic personality disorder. Despite the joy and wonder with which he engaged the world, he cared about other people — parents, friends, siblings, children, partners — only as if they were participants in his eponymous movie. We were cast in roles that he created, and if we deviated from his script, we were wrong. Because he was charismatic and persuasive, we often felt foolish if we didn’t see things as he did. When we ceased to have value to him, we were written out of the story.

To this day, a year after he proved his beyond doubt that he was ill — after meeting his psychiatrist, who diagnosed the disorder — I catch myself wondering if we’re not just exaggerating.

His memorial service helped. I hold on to it as evidence that the complexity isn’t imagined.

On one side of the room sat his colleagues from the university, where he was under-employed an assistant in a biology lab. (He was 47 and had three degrees and more than 10 years’ work history with the EPA.) Evidently Jim showed up in a professor’s office one day out of the blue, and asked to audit a PhD-level seminar. The professor scoffed, handed Jim a textbook, and told him to come back when he had finished it. A few weeks later Jim returned and and they had a long and deep conversation about biology. They became fast friends, and Jim was offered work in the lab. Everyone at the school saw him as special, a bright light, not someone who could have deeply rooted instability.

On the other side of the memorial service, our mom, his ex-wife, teenage sons, sisters, and a few high school friends knew much more complex man. My sister had lived with his life-long ridicule and contempt. I had been accosted by repeated suicide threats (always sent by email), and viciously attacked when I tried to intervene. His ex-wife had begged him to get help six months before he killed himself. I can’t imagine what his kids have been through.

Living with a person like this is slippery. He sees life from such a strange and interesting, point of view, that when he lays out his philosophy (for instance, that humans are just corrosion on the planet), you actually sort of believe him, even when you know it’s ridiculous. He’s so sure that he’s right that you learn to doubt your own judgment.

I met Jim only once. But the impression he left is as if I had spoken to him many many times…I left the meeting laughing heartily and amazed by this talented and pleasant person. I’m sure Jim has touched countless people. I am glad I’m one of them.

I’m glad I’m one of them, too…but then he pulled a bag over his head.

How could I maintain clarity when faced with a super-smart, exceptional-seeming crazy big brother? It’s the most infuriating, frustrating, doubt-inducing situation. Especially when you’re nine and the crazy person is 14 and the most popular boy in school.

(Cue the Suicidal Tendencies’ 1983 hit “I’m not crazy…you’re the one who’s crazy…you’re driving me crazy”.)

I should be angry with him for killing himself, but I’m not really. It’s what he wanted. He had been planning it for years: He had his will notarized monthly. He took out a life insurance policy with a multi-year suicide clause and patiently waited until it matured, so that his boys would have resources. It should be just enough to pay for their inevitable decades of therapy.

Precipitating Events

His choice of timing is not surprising. My father — from whom he was astranged — died just a few months prior, after a 10-year illness. A few weeks later Jim asked his ex-girlfriend to marry him; she declined (“not until you get help”). He bought a ring, became depressed.

She and a friend successfully staged an intervention, had his gun impounded, and got him admitted to a locked ward for 72 hours of observation. She says it was the most calm she had ever seen him. Upon release, he began seeing a psychiatrist. He wanted to go every day, to prove that he was doing as she wished. He was convinced that a perfect love, a new wife, would make his life meaningful. A few weeks after the intervention, he acted on his long-held plan.

His girlfriend thinks he finally accepted his illness and couldn’t face the future as a crazy man (he had already watched schizophrenia take our sister and bipolar disorder take our

Goofing during photos. We both loved dancing.

Goofing during photos. We both loved dancing.

father). I believe that his inability to connect deeply, to love, ultimately killed him.

The last thing I said to him was “If you ever decide to get help, I’ll do anything I can. But until then, I can’t have a relationship with you.” At the memorial, I came to realize how many of us have said some version of those words to him.

I miss him. I loved him so much. It makes my heart ache. A light went out when he died, and my life feels diminished. But it’s also more stable, less fearful. He caused of a lot of emotional trauma; he inspired so many to look with fresh eyes.

I hope to find in my life that which he never did — love, peace, and a settled acceptance of my self.

Posted in big thoughts, coping and dealing, depression, mental illness, milestones, my family | 7 Comments »

“Get up Trinity! Get Up!”

Monday, February 7th, 2005

Each time the depression relapses, I have to force myself into action. It takes an act of will to turn off the TV, cork the bottle of wine, and iron my clothes for the morning.

Things that help:

Walk in the sunshine
Show up for work
Tend to everyday grooming
Make the bed and hang the clothes
Turn off the TV
Binge on healthy snacks
Socialize in small groups
Tell Jason what’s happening
Sit with Evan

These are the smallest component parts of life, and tending to them can begin to turn the depression. Little bits each day of not giving in.

There are predictable reasons that this works. For example, if I can make myself wash a load of socks in the evening, then I’m likely to avoid the “wow, I suck” feeling in the morning when I go to get dressed and have none clean. But there are subtler effects, too — by caring for the smallest components of my life, I can begin to undo the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness that accompany depression.

Shortly after Cameron and I separated in 1995, I was feeling (understandably) out of control. I had an acquaintance who was a professional organizer, and I hired her to come and spend four hours with me to get things in order, or at least into perspective. I expected her to sort through papers and make labels for things. While we did a bit of that, we spent most of the time organizing my life priorities. She had me make a pie chart with eight pieces. And in each wedge of pie, I was to name the most important themes that comprise my whole life. Here’s my list (in no particular order):

Financial stability
Physical well-being
Emotional health
Loved ones
Community
Surroundings
Intellect
Spirit

For nearly a year after that, I would sit for a few minutes every evening and list what I had done to care for myself in each category. In a newly independent state, I was making sure that I was safe and well cared for.

ACA tells us that “You can become your own loving parent.”
Wu Li told us “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.”

I find these all to be versions of the same philosophy. Managing depression takes gentleness, deliberate attention to the mundane, and a realization that I am responsible for my own health and happiness.

Posted in coping and dealing, depression, getting healthy, mental illness | No Comments »

Mental Illness and Me

Saturday, February 5th, 2005

Today I’m struggling with depression. Not the blues, but honest-to-god brain chemistry problems. In June 2003 I was diagnosed with long-term depression. We suspect that I’ve had it since I was a teenager. After about 8 months on Effexor, I woke up one day happy. It was a revelation. The fog that had surrounded me for most of my life had lifted, and it was like seeing blue sky for the first time.

Since then, my life has improved significantly. I’m happy much of the time, I’m more effective (and less annoying) at work, I don’t get as angry as I used to. But now I know what “good” feels like, so the occasional relapses are that much more unhappy. In some ways ignorance was, well, not bliss but perhaps blind.

Depression is the sort of disease where the symptom is the cause — the feeling of depression is caused by and in turn causes changes in neurotransmitters. I evidently don’t make enough serotonin, which the meds usually compensate for. But there are triggers that throw the newly regulated system out of whack. What’s very hard for me to understand is that the triggers are not physical, they’re psychological.

Being raised American in the late Twentieth Century, I’m conditioned to think of physical problems as physical and psychological problems as psychological. Doctors help with the physical stuff and psychologists help with the rest. Being ignorant and arrogant, we believed that the only connection between psychological strain and physical illness is “psychosomatic” and therefore not real.

Learning to manage my depression has shown how misguided this kind of thinking is. Which brings me back to today. Here’s what it feels like: I’m exhausted but filled with anxiety. I don’t want to talk to anybody. I don’t want to listen to messages, read my mail, play with my son. I catch myself gnawing at my fingers until they throb. My face feels heavy, and I see only fat and pimples when I look in the mirror. Life feels completely unmanageable. I look around my house and feel overwhelmed by unfolded laundry and cluttered tabletops. During these times, I can (ironically) become very productive and competent — I’m not sure whether it’s overcompensation or an attempt to bring order to a chaos that isn’t real and therefore can’t be tamed. Regardless, cleaning the house and getting a manicure never makes it all better.

What really frustrates me is that I know the cause of my relapses: Family crisis.

Not my little family out here in Califorina. Jason and Evan and I have had very few real crises. No, the trauma always comes from my siblings or parents. Here are a few highlights from recent years:

+ My sister, homeless for five years, was found. She moves in with my mother and eventually tries to light my mother’s hair on fire. She gets arrested.
+ My father has a near-fatal “cardiac event” (though eventually they decide that it wasn’t a heart attack).
+ My brother sends a suicide letter to me by email. I get it at work.

I won’t try to explain the back-story. It’s enough to know that at roughly six-month intervals my family has some sort of shocking crisis. I keep thinking there’s nothing new they can throw at me, but I’m always wrong. Each time this happens, I get upset and six weeks later (sometimes less) I realize that I’m sleeping more, biting my fingernails, avoiding my friends. I find myself listless, unfocused, depressed.

At times like these, well-meaning friends inevitably recommend meditation, exercise, “talks”. But there’s nothing to talk about, and if I had the vigor to join a gym then by definition I wouldn’t be depressed. They’re seeing things from a normal perspective. What I see is how hard everything seems. The effort seems insurmountable. I know enough to see those thoughts for what they are — echoes of the missing serotonin — but they feel true anyway.

The worst part of this is that I don’t know how to stop the pattern. Next time my family knocks the wind out of me, the symptoms will return. I don’t yet know how to duck the blow.

Posted in depression, getting healthy, me, mental illness, my family | 5 Comments »