Hiding the monster
I wake up the same way most mornings, these days. A cat knocks something over, way too early. It’s her way of demanding to be fed.
I rise, brain half-asleep. Find the cat. Shut her in my office. She’ll be fed later, but I need sleep. After I pee.
It’s usually somewhere between my bathroom door and the toilet that the other part of my brain wakes up.
My depression.
It comes out of the dark like an awakened dragon. Eyes gleaming in anticipation. I’ve been free of it for a few precious hours, but now I’m awake. Now I’m vulnerable.
The thought comes, unbidden. “Why aren’t you writing?”
I know why. It knows why. It’s not a question. Depression is rhetorical because it sees everything, knows everything. It enjoys asking the questions you least want to hear.
On cue, like I have a blank sheet of paper in the typewriter of my mind, I see the words.
I wake up the same way most mornings, these days.
Oh. I’m writing about this. I’m going to talk about this. Okay.
I’ve been trying to figure out recently which came first. The depression or the lack of writing. It’s a real chicken-and-egg thing. Sometimes I think it’s the depression. Sometimes I think it’s lack of writing. Sometimes I think it’s both. I can’t figure out the answer, because if I did, it would illuminate a way out of the maze.
In case you haven’t guessed yet, the answer to that question changes whenever I ask it of myself. Because of depression.
Depression alters reality around you in a way that’s impossible to see. It warps perception. It changes opinion. It conjures hallucinations. It alters your simulation of the world with an errant keystroke.
In other words, it fucks with you. All the time.
So when you think you have the answer, the answer changes. The snake turns into a staff. The opportunity into a threat. The hope into fear.
It laughs at you and darts away, eyes flashing, scales flickering. It slithers back into the darkness and waits. Because it is so very patient. It knows it will be alongside you forever, and that you will be vulnerable one day, one hour, one second. It waits.
You feel shame and guilt and fear that others will see this monster within, so you cloak yourself in normalcy, in the trappings of social acceptance. You walk around like a ghost inhabiting your taut shell, eyes darting, ears pricked for any sign that others can see this. That they will pierce your defenses. That they will see your weakness.
Somehow though, they never do. They never see.
So in a moment of desperation you manage to expose yourself, to show a part of you that no-one has seen. The monster within. You point and you scream THERE! IT’S THERE, CAN’T YOU SEE IT?
But your voice is the whimper of a frightened child. Barely able to look someone in the eye, let alone issue a warning. Regardless, the monster retreats. It does not wish to be exposed. It is patient. It will wait.
So when those you confessed to look, when they see, when they pull back your cloak… they can’t understand. They don’t see a monster: they may not even see you. They still see the person you’re pretending to be.
Unless, of course, they have their own monster too.
I’ve been seriously dealing with depression for about 18 months. I’m pretty sure I had it for a long time before that, but that’s when I got medicated. It helps.
The connection between writing — well, creative endeavors generally, I guess — and depression became more obvious this year. Almost crystal clear. The less I wrote, the more depressed I became.
The solution seems obvious to you, I’m sure.
But as the ever protean, ever changing monster reminds me, the solution is never easy. It’s one thing to think it, to even know it, but it’s another to do.
So, every day I recommit. Every day I try. Some days I fail. Recently I’ve failed a lot. But other days I succeed. Even if I’m not writing what I want to — even if I’m just confessing here — it frustrates the monster. It keeps it at bay. It pushes it back into the dark.
And while I know the darkness is there, and within that, the monster, at least by my words and my thoughts, I can… cope with it. Not control it, because it laughs at my attempts. But reason with it. Trick it. Cajole it. Whatever it takes to keep the monster at bay and the light alive, I must do.
Tomorrow I’ll wake up too early and I’ll chase down the cat. When I pee though, I’ll think of this and maybe it will help.
