Depression
From earliest childhood, every night as I went to sleep I prayed to die in my sleep. I don't remember anything prior to age three and a half, but I do remember knowing at that age that I always had been in that much pain. Then, for one week, captured in this photo, on Long Lake in Bloomfield Hills Michigan in this boat with my brother when I was seven years old, I had the first week in my life when I wasn't putting off suicide moment by moment all day long. I was amazed that the world could be like that. From then on I kept thinking that if I allowed myself to live long enough, eventually I might find a place or situation in which I experienced something other than agony day in and day out.
The next time I had a week like that I was sixteen
At age three and a half, I couldn't live with it any longer. I tried to find a way out. From my bedroom to the driveway at the back of the house was three stories. I spent time staring down at that driveway thinking about it. It seemed high enough to end things, but I wasn't positive. And if it didn't, it was reeeeally going to hurt.
Whenever I spent the night at my Grandfather Selmeier's house, at that age in the same bed with my sister, he would tuck us in with a warning not to sleep with our heads under the covers or we might suffocate. Ah, a solution. I tried that in the middle of the afternoon, but it wasn't working. So I climbed between the mattress and box spring. There were air leaks. I stuffed blankets and sheets around me to block them. I remember the sound of children outside becoming muffled. My breath made the space become damp. I was in there for hours and fell asleep.
Grandfather was wrong. My own grandfather, wrong? That gave me a lot to think about (hey, I was three and half). For the rest of my life, evidence would be more important to my beliefs than authority figures, thus eventually undoing my religious upbringing.
When I woke up between the mattresses, I realized how much my dying would have hurt my mother. I didn't want to hurt her. I didn't think my father would care. And I was sure that for my sister, the most persistent source of torment in my life and my only sibling at the time, this would have been a dream fulfilled. But I didn't want to hurt Mom.
I knew that old people more or less wore out and died. So I promised myself that I would force myself to go on living until she died, and then I would escape. I didn't appreciate how long a commitment I was making.
For the next thirty odd years I constantly was aware of the exits. I avoided entanglements that would require promising to be here much into the future. Having children was out of the question not just because they would be another promise like the one that already was keeping me here, but also because along the way I discovered that this depression was genetic and ran in the family. The idea that my children might have to live through what I was living through was beyond imaging.
How different people's experiences can be.
In my late thirties I heard a report about depression on National Public Radio. They said that most people, at some point in their lives, will be depressed. What? Only most? Some never will? And most of the rest will only once? Huh? Can this be?
I walked around muttering that to myself in disbelief for months.
Then this woman who had been hanging around for reasons that were unfathomable to me (how could I be a worse catch?) made an unexpected inroad. Times when I couldn't imagine existence being more unbearable, trying to figure out how to get through just the next five minutes, she would smile cheerfully, completely unaffected by where I was. Over time she turned out to be the only person, place or thing that ever had made it so that I could stand being here. And she wanted to marry me. Ya hate to take advantage of people when they aren't thinking clearly, but for me it was life and death decision. So I went with it.
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Spaulding Gray
The creative genius Spaulding Gray went swimming in winter in a cold climate. He got on the Staten Island Ferry and stepped off halfway across. It wasn't quite that easy. Even with all of his years of rehearsing and planning for performances, he still made at least several unsuccessful attempts before swimming in winter. I've always had a certain disrespect for people who don't get it right. But even Gray failed a few times before working out kinks. For instance, he left his wallet on a bench on the ferry as he walked to the rail (as a trail), which aroused suspicions. Next time he left it at a friend's and then made a phone call to his home from a pay phone at the ferry terminal, to which it later could be traced by the police.
Did anyone ever consider paddling or kayaking in winter? You don't have to come back. Or buying a wet suit and a kickboard. Then an hour out, taking off the wetsuit? For something less elaborate, any stretch of coastline in the cold can do with a running start with a cement block tied to your wrist. So dramatic though. So jarring compared to a quiet paddle on a sunny afternoon in December. There are, of course, warm, peaceful methods that make no mess and can be done at home. But to discuss them is to invite lawsuits.
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Grief
Grievers are tourists in the land of depression.
I read a piece by a psychiatrist who said that from grieving for a loved one he now understood what his depressed patients go through. However much he may have been effected by his trip through grief, he didn't feel jealous of the deceased person's escaping into death. So he doesn't get it.
To compare grief to depression is like getting caught in the rain and thinking that now you know what it is like to be trapped underwater without air.