Umbrellas, depression and tightropes

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-nalysing

the rainclouds doesn't make it rain

it allows you to assess the preparations you need to make

before                                   the                                  deluge

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       effects

I have a tendency I know to intellectualise and to analyse as a way of addressing my demons.

For me it has to be that way. I have to rationalise before I can deal with the actual emotion although the rationalisation has never itself stopped the darkness from overwhelming me. I'm just trying to understand why I am like this... If I can understand it rationally then maybe I can get a firmer control on it emotionally.

My name is Chris and I am depressed.

I struggle with the word – because firstly, I don't want to be, secondly I don't want to label myself.

I don't want to be defined by the word any more than I want to be defined by a narrow view of what being male is about.

I don't want to use the label as an excuse.

I don't want to feel a sense of addiction to it.

But there is a sense in which this self-diagnosis is helpful. It helps me to forgive myself. It helps me to see my mental and emotional state as the result, perhaps the inevitable result, of the events of my life and the reactions I have had to them. It gives me an opportunity to say 'you did your best' to myself. And now also to say 'You may want to revisit those decisions you made back then and check they are still right for you. You may want to inspect the "rules" by which you have chosen your path in life and see if there aren't some tweaks that it would be beneficial to make. Are those rules still valid? Are they just? Are they relevant any more? Who made them in the first place and do you still respect the rule-makers?'

Depression is a negative thing because it causes the sufferer to feel like a victim of circumstances, to feel they are worthless but at the same time it places them at the centre of it all. 'The world/the universe/life/you have done this to Me...' 'Woe is me!'

The mighty Universe/God/you are all conspiring against me to make my life miserable – impossible even.

Everything becomes about how difficult my life is even though there are clearly those in the world whose physical circumstances are far worse than mine. And that leads to a sense of guilt and self admonishment that drives the depression further in, seats it more heavily within the dark, selfish soul of the sufferer – me.

Everything I experience I am able to fit into this pattern – someone else's wealth, health/fitness, success at some undertaking, artistic creation... all these just go to show how worthless my contribution is, how unsuccessful my efforts are. It's all a fiction, of course, but don't for a moment think that makes it less potent.

And Shame...

for me this is the biggy. I have come to recognise how shame has been passed down through my upbringing and Catholic faith. The subtle insistent undermining and devaluing of human instinct, human appetites, in search of some vague notion of eternal bliss.

I'm not blaming my parents. They were unconditionally loving and kind and warm, but they too were governed by a sense of shame – a moral code that was built upon the Christian understanding of Good and Evil. Everything has been about expunging the Evil, the Dark Side, and honouring only the unselfish, the giving, the loving. I don't know how to 'feel' any different because feelings are such deeply rooted things – they are based on the deeply instilled messages we receive from infancy. How do we rewrite that coding? How are we reborn and allowed to rebuild our world view with a more human/animal based morality – a morality which works for humanity as a social species living on this blue planet at this time in history in the company of a million other species.

Intellectually, I rejected in my thirties the structured religion that I was raised in and yet shame operates still. It's a vicious cycle – I feel shame at not listening to the voice of shame. In some ways it feels as if it's not that I have stopped believing in God, it's just I have determined to live my life without acknowledging God. I know God exists I just don't want to pay any attention to it. So my punishment is still accruing like unpaid library fines.

Shame tells me to behave. It tells me what misbehaviour is and that if I indulge in misbehaviour then I am 'dirty, perverted, immoral, unclean, unfit, sick...' the list goes on.

Shame tells me depression is a 'shameful' feeling – it is not real – it is controllable and simply an indulgence like masturbation, or biscuit eating, or drinking too much. Shame is literally a dis-ease.

So how do we integrate all these elements into one healthy human being?

I don't know.

How do I – without rationalising to some extent – undo the conditioning that has brought me to this place?
I don't know.

All I know is I have to keep asking that question.
All I know is that I have to seek to remove or at the very least recognise where shame is playing its part. Why am I feeling ashamed of what I am doing?

I have become keenly aware of shame having a physical effect upon me. It causes me to squirm, twitch and judder, to tense my muscles against themselves. It is a physical energy within me making me cringe. Sometimes it hits me as a full belly blow – a wrecking ball swinging into my gut. It is literally a physical sensation and a mental image that recurs time and again. The squirming, too – as if I am trapped in my body and that if I can just wriggle and stretch in just the right way I can break free from it and leave all the shit behind like a sloughed skin in the bed.

At other times the energy manifests as extreme sexual longing, an erotic desire for physical love – a sexual feeling of wanting to penetrate and consume another being and to offer myself up to that experience without hindrance from morality and social mores. I want to be consumed in the same way. Feel the passion of which I have always been, yes you guessed it, ASHAMED!

Anyone who follows @KnightAberrant on twitter will have read my sexual, passionate yearnings, for yes he is that part of me. And then sometimes he dies inside me when the shame is too strong. He is a most, in some ways THE most vital part of me and yet I cannot own him... for Shame! Bastard Shame! So I seesaw between binging and suppressing him, it, my sexuality...

And I have suddenly realised that I am writing this for public consumption. Because I can't SAY it all to the people I love but they need to know it because it is affecting every part of my life and not in a positive way.

Depression is a tightrope along which I am walking. As long as I keep my head up and don't look down my feet will find the tightrope and I can function. If I look down, if I examine how narrow this path is, how constricting it is, the whole thing begins to wobble. But I have started to look down. And some of you have seen me start to wobble. Maybe it's time to let myself fall off. I don't have to stay on the tightrope at all. Yes maybe it'll hurt hitting the ground but how much more will there be to explore down there? Down there where I don't have to live on a fucking tightrope! Whoever thought that would be a good idea? Such a narrow, constricted, dangerous existence.

And I know some of you are there with your arms stretched out to catch me... which makes me feel that this tumble may become more a stage surf. Could even be a pleasurable experience if I can just pluck up the courage to jump.

I'm working up to it.

I just hope you aren't disappointed if the person you catch isn't quite the person you thought you knew. He is trying to be more honest and more open and more energetic and passionate. He's trying to be a better human.

And if you've read through to this point I count myself truly blessed in having you in my life.