Beakers.
Profound depression—and the despair of ever being free of it—is a slippery state to describe to others, the compassionate others who do want to understand. You’re left feeling around in the dark, snatching the first word you can touch with your blind hands.
My dear friend M and I were talking about this last week. We grabbed onto the word together: beakers. It’s such an odd, absurd word, I have to ask myself if it’s real, if I made it up, if I’m spelling it right. A Muppet character, yes?
I keep returning to the conversation, M and I, at my kitchen table. The spoken word is much harder for me than the written, and the written is difficult too. The spoken: The face of the other, right there.
There is fear, no matter who it is, no matter how friendly the face.
*****
When you’re profoundly, sickeningly depressed and bottoming out, you are acutely aware of it. Especially if you can’t seem to beat it, no matter what you do. It’s embarrassing, to do everything you can, and still you slide.
You can’t believe that anyone can handle your appalling, awful, mortifying slop. This isn’t narcissism. This is pain so intense, you don’t want to mess around with it. This stuff is radioactive, a cancer.
So you dole it out carefully, drop by drop, if anyone asks how you are. You don’t want to spill on them.
*****
M and I talked about this, some, as the kids played.
“Beakers,” I said to M, or she to me.
“Exactly!” she said, or I said.
We said: You share a little with one friend, until you’re sure you’ve maxed out her beaker (and are sloshing over the sides, making a mess on her toes). You guess another friend can maybe hear a little more, so you try to explain what hurts, that you are worried that it still hurts. But her beaker, in your anxious mind, is nearing full too. Who can bear to listen to you? You can barely stand yourself, in this ugly state.
“So you move on—”
“Exactly.”
*****
As a “depressed person,” you’ve done your homework, possibly for years. You know that you’re supposed to talk, get it off your chest, not shut down, shut people out. You try hard to believe that some people really want to know how you are. But you find yourself sizing up imaginary beakers: Who could possibly handle this? Maybe this, but NOT that.
You’re miserable, but you’re not an idiot. You’re withdrawn, but you’re not selfish. You know everyone hurts. Everyone has their own stories, playing out.
You’re severely wrecked, walking around with a jagged triangle of glass wedged in your throat, hot tears pushing at the back of your eyes, all the time. But you are not so far gone that you can’t see that others are hurting too. You don’t want to add to anyone else’s crap. It gets pretty confusing, in a head that’s already really confused.
“After a while, it’s hard to say anything,” M or I said.
“Completely,” I or M said.
M understands. But watch, I won’t dare overflow her beaker either.
*****
It is exhausting to say again and again, Yes, still not better, no. Yes, tried that. Yes, still doing that, still talking to X and Y. No, no, careful not to do that, of course.
People love you, they want to make it better, want to fix you. When you don’t get better, sometimes, there is frustration.
*****
For lack of a better word, I worry about your beakers when you come here. Ah, it sounds so saucy! Check out those beakers! Well, we writers do what we can. Language is absurd.
I try to ration out what hurts, here. Wrote about sadness just the other day, I really need to come up with something else, another anecdote about loose teeth, anything but sadness. That’s how the thought process works.
I can’t always come up with the words.
I am working hard on a new manuscript, and again, I think I should be cleaning out horse stalls. It hurts to write. But it hurts to not write.
I write these days, copiously, because I don’t know where else to put the pain. I can’t find a damn beaker tall enough, or I would pour it into that and rent a storage locker for it and forget about it.
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