what is medicine anyway?

dispatches from depression

Lads, I've been depressed. Or as a friend described it in a *handwritten* letter to me earlier this year, have a case of “little interest or pleasure in doing things”. I don’t know how many of you have had to fill out those forms in a waiting room. The ones in which you rank yourself in a series of highly impersonal wellness markers to essentially indicate to whoever you’re about to see, how imminently you are likely to kill yourself. The irony of course is that filling this form out hardly increases your chances of wanting to live…

Throughout my early years as a mental health patient, I was what would be considered “very compliant”. I hung onto the words of my doctors, did what they told me to, took what they told me to, smiled when I could muster it, and was in general an enthusiastic participant in whatever scheme was being concocted to make me “well again”. 

I had this thing with receiving help - I probably still do - that should I find myself in the position of being helped, should someone commit to the act of diverting attention from their own life and towards the improvement of mine, I am So Grateful that there’s no room for critique. It doesn’t matter if the help is actually helpful or not, nevermind if my gut is trying to tell me something or if I don’t even know what tf is going on. There is such scarcity attached to that feeling, the intention or motions of help, the attention, regardless of whether i’m actually being seen or not, that of course, I try to make myself compliant. As compliant as possible, with medical professionals and beyond, so as not to rock the boat or dislodge this dismembered bosom from its resting place, with me. Anyone relate?

Anyway, I remember one time in a waiting room, being handed one of these fucking forms for like the hundredth time in my sweet, innocent life and deciding then that i’d never fill one out again. I marked the whole page with a giant X and while the doctor on the other side definitely did not notice / care, it meant something to me, you know? 

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I didn’t start this newsletter with the intention of sharing my personal experiences with depression, and will totally get back to writing about boats soon, but if there’s one thing i’ve learnt over the years, it’s that depression must be honoured when it makes itself known.

I stopped trying to figure out the “why” of depression a long time ago, as mine isn’t particularly situational other than the situation of being alive. Given the time of year, it’s of course tempting to blame the seasons, but I know in my heart of hearts that my depression is a true equal opportunities ambassador as far as all that goes, and I love rain and all the seasons, and SAD isn’t real anyway.