I was fresh out of topics for this quarter’s CAMP HORROR column, so I thought I’d give the readers a vulture’s-eye view of my personal life, and the ‘stay of execution’ I just received on Sunday.
Up until Sunday, execution seemed imminent, and tragically, it would be my
own finger on the trigger. The only delay seemed to be in choosing the method.
It would have to be something that seemed accidental, or something that left
only an unidentified skeleton (and a baffled coroner) behind. My first thought
was a car crash, which could be termed accidental, and thus providing my loved
ones with a good chunk of insurance change. Yet I wish to take no one with
me, and I understand that insurance investigators are quite good at discerning
self-directed car crashes.
Next up was drowning, or even better, a jump from a bridge that spans a section
of the ocean. The Golden Gate Bridge, for example, is almost a Mecca for suicides.
If you somehow survive the drop—and you probably won’t—the
current is strong, the water cold, and the sharks are waiting. Chances of one’s
body being recovered are quite low.
The best ticket to me seemed like the one chosen by Nicolas Cage’s character
in LEAVING LAS VEGAS. A fortnight of partying with prostitutes, drinking oneself
to death all the while. There is enough left on my credit cards to have a pretty
good fling in Vegas—menage-a-trois included--then take off for the mountains
nearby to let poisons and predation take their course.
Odd, isn’t it, how Death Row convicts battle to the end, filing appeal
after appeal just to stay alive inside a prison, a bleak concrete cauldron
boiling over with evil, while ever-growing masses of ‘perfectly good
white boys’* take lives of freedom and luxury and throw them away like
the empty bottles they’ve seemed to become.
(*Not to denote racial superiority, but that the majority of suicides are white males.)
This is the horror of Depression.
You live in a comfortable climate of gleaming sunshine, but you can no longer
see it because you yourself are radiating a cold gray fog. You are surrounded
by books, films, art and fine clothing, none of which mean anything to you
any more. Your once-beloved pet, a loyal friend and companion, is now a parasite
that only sees you as a source of food. You have a decent car which could
take you virtually anywhere in a matter of hours, and is a technological
marvel our ancestors would have killed to have, but whenever you drive it
you feel as if you’re trapped in a gladiatorial chariot race between
zombies and madmen. You have more food than most third-world families will
ever see, yet you barely taste it, and the simple act of preparing and eating
it seems like drudgery. You have a decent-paying job while millions are out
of work, yet you feel as if you’re merely moving around a life-sized
Monopoly board where all the properties have already been bought, and you
can only make enough money to keep moving. Family, friends, lovers, co-workers
and acquaintances—some known for decades, some still waiting to be
met—are everywhere and would probably love to see or hear from you.
Yet you withdraw from them, and from humanity in general. You feel as if
you have nothing to say, and somehow think your mere presence would taint
them with your own interior gloom…and far be it from you to bring your
own rain on someone else’s parade.
You have been blessed with a human body, the zenith of evolution, yet you cram
it with junk food, sugar, nicotine, alcohol, drugs, anything at all to numb
you to your ever-encroaching horror.
You have been blessed with life itself, trillions of ongoing chain reactions
giving you the opportunity to influence the world, and you don’t even
care about it any more.
Worse still, for those possessed of a fertile imagination, depression gradually
metamorphs your fellow human beings into monsters. Your boss has become either
a bellowing ogre or a creeping goblin ready to thrust a dagger labeled ‘terminated’ into
your back. Your co-workers slave and moan like zombies. Senior citizens also
remind you of the living dead, or at least of slow-moving wretches that have
defied death for far too long. Doll-like young children have become wailing
banshees or accident-causing gremlins. Teenagers and young adults make you
think that the Morlocks of H.G. Well’s The Time Machine have arrived
early. Women, however fair their appearance and manner, can only be vampires…they
remain seductive but fly like bats from your approach, dissolve into mist in
your fantasies, and you fear that their kisses will drain you of your money,
your freedom and whatever life-force you have remaining to you. Your fellow
men might as well be werewolves; they haven’t harmed you yet, but just
give them a full moon and/or a chance to snap…
You are surrounded on all sides, and the odds aren’t promising.
I theorize that this ‘sub-syndrome’ of depression might be responsible
for the mass murders of Columbine, and the rampages of postal workers and other
normally decent members of society. When depression bleaches life itself of
its color—and
it does—the sufferer sees the world in black and white. He or she might
then be compelled to rid the world of one color or another, before ridding
it of themselves. Here then, is one of the birthplaces of evil…for if
you don’t matter, why should anyone else?
Depression is often hereditary, and I was discouraged to learn it existed within my family before I did, and still plagues most of us. As I recently learned, I was one of the only ‘non-medicated’ adults in my family. With no real cure, this syndrome runs roughshod over one’s psyche, but a fraction of intellect remains untouched by depression. Perhaps the hypothalamus, perhaps just the will to survive, who knows. A tiny, righteous group of our brain cells clings to its conviction that hey, we’re alive and we ought to stay that way for as long as we can, and how does this idiot dare to think he can take us with him? We’ve done Shakespeare in front of hundreds! We’ve built a school! We’ve written books! We’ve given blood! We’re in movies! We’ve held the door open for little old ladies! We’ve brought dozens of women to orgasm! We’ve given to charities! We’ve got a great body and we’re useful and hardworking and humorous and sometimes even humble!
How, then, did I get my ‘stay of execution’?
Quite simply, that remaining fraction of intellect I had took control, and
I went to church.
I’d been avoiding it for some time…mostly just due to Sunday morning
hangovers, and the cynical belief that my Church, however well-intentioned,
was behind the times, and condemning my pleasures. Then I realized I had no
more pleasures. My life of excess had led me to a palace of wisdom, all right,
but that palace was empty. Partying only brought ruined health, trashed apartments
and poverty; wanton sex only attracted women who didn’t care about me
and scared off those who might have cared.
I’d been choosing churches at random, some Catholic, some Lutheran…the
messenger was never as important as the message itself. Sunday the 24th led
me to the First Christian Church in Kissimmee. Most fortunately, its theme
for that day was Life, the only appropriate choice.
There was a brief, poignant skit about abortion, but then there was more.
The pastor brought up the subject of suicide. Biblically, it was murder in
black
and white. There was no gray area. He hammered the point home with First Corinthians
6:19—“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit,
who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were
bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”
Hell has always been one of the most effective antidotes to suicide. In a
nutshell, if you think things are bad in this life, wait ‘til you jump
out of the frying pan, into the fire.
But as effective as that threat is, it’s actually secondary to the raw
selfishness and spite of being created, only to destroy yourself. What if your
ultimate purpose was just around the next corner, but you cheated yourself
of it? And in doing so, cheated the world of you?
I contemplated these things, considered them a stay of execution, and resolved
to seek treatment for depression. If you too suffer from depression, consider
the following:
•
If you’ve been depressed for over three weeks and haven’t sought
treatment, thinking it’ll just ‘go away’, it probably won’t
go away.
•
You do not have to take antidepressants; depression can be aided through traditional
psychotherapy…but traditional psychotherapy takes much longer.
• Avoid alcohol, as it too is a depressant. Also try to eat a balance
diet and restrict your intake of drugs, sugars, caffeine and fried foods (actually,
everybody should be doing this already).
•
If you can’t or won’t take antidepressants, consider supplementing
your diet with St. John’s Wort. It’s helpful, natural and economical;
it’s just not as strong as pharmaceutical antidepressants.
• Add fresh flowers or live plants to your household.
• Listen to positive music or subliminally motivational tapes where
possible.
•
Turn off the news (it’s always bad) in favor of comedies.
• Get plenty of sleep, fresh air, sunshine and exercise.
• Reach out to loved ones, neighbors or co-workers—NOT to take unsolicited psychiatric help, but just to socialize, communicate and get some perspective. If you don’t have loved ones near you, volunteer for the less fortunate.
Remember that no matter who you are, you matter. Remember Desiderata: “You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.”
Best wishes,
K.K.
Midastouch4kk@yahoo.com