I should start with a recollection of my history, a recollection of past encounters that brought me to this point in my trajectory. Ons of the best ways I can do this is to copy here a post I recently placed on Facebook. This post took a very long time to be written, despite how desperately I wanted to express my feelings. Then one Saturnday night at 2am, I sat up in bed, utterly distraught and in a suicidal haze, and typed it out on my phone from start to finish. That I had the courage to post it remains astounding to me, but despite my fears that the sky would fall, I have begun - slowly - to inch towards healing. In future posts I will elaborate further on many different issues.
One of the definitions given of the word testament in the Mirriam-Webster dictionary is 'a tangible proof or tribute'. This then is my testament, a proof of my struggle and a tribute to my hope, despite all convictions to the contrary, that I can escape the dark dungeon room I currently sit in. I have always loved metaphors for some reason, so here is one. Currently I am sitting on the cold stone floor of a room. It is dark all around me. A metaphor for my depression. My room however, is invisible. I can be in the world, talking, eating, shopping, for all intents appearing normal, and at the same time I sit in this room. I have heard from the experiences of others that this room has an exit somewhere but for some reason I've convinced myself from time to time that this does not, cannot, apply to my room. My room is different. For one, it's very old. Its contruction started some time around the time I was 12, but the foundations are even older. All I know is I was 12 when I first considered the option of ending it all.
In the years since, the walls of my room were built higher - a brick was laid every time I was bullied, or felt invisible, or cried to myself in silence at night. These days my room boasts a roof, and while I'm adept at ignoring it, it has been getting rather darker in here. Perhaps this room is also a tomb, and it's almost finished.
Truth is, I have much to be grateful for, I do research work I enjoy and find endlessly fascinating. I am furthering my studies as well, and have the best PhD supervisor. I have a birdy I deeply love, and whose mischief always brings me joy. But lately something new has been happening in my dark room, invisible to the world. It has slowly been filling with water. Previously, for periods lasting even years I could forget about this room while I was - even happily - going around in the world outside. Yet, it is the curse of all mental illness (which is still stigmatised) to be invisible to the world. In this way those of us who know this path live two lives - one within and one without. At the same time these mental illnesses which are so prevalent in our world today, and perhaps always have been, but were even more invisible before, often try and tell us that something is wrong. Perhaps some aspects of them at least call our attention to all those pains we have studiously been condensing into bricks that we accumulate as we live our lives - or, in my case, that I have used to build my room.
Illnesses such as depression also turn us, or me at least, into a vampire. We fear the light and seek the dark corners and alleyways in which to feel our pain. Perhaps I have accumulated a drop of water condensing in my cold stone room every time I have done this. Now, as I sit in my room, the water has gone past my neck and I am in serious danger of drowning. I have thought many, many times of how I could express what all this is like to the world. If you see this then one of my attempts at least has worked. Yet even now I fear the shame of talking about these things. This is one of the ways in which mental ill health becomes so powerful and so dangerous. It convinces us to keep quiet, to avoid the shame, that we will be even worse off if we speak its name because others will hate us more and isolate us more. Truth is, I've done the monster's work myself out of fear of others doing it to me first. I have hated myself, shamed myself, silenced myself, isolated myself, so that I wouldn't have to feel the pain of others doing this to me once they found out how weak and deplorable I really was.
As the waters in my room rose in recent months and weeks, I've even tried something worse. Something we don't speak about or mention. Something we get shamed for and pitied for and hated for even more. Luckily I couldn't go all the way, and the scars I still carry have almost faded. Like Wolverine I heal fast and well, but this power doesn't extend to the other mind-world I live in. There, wounds never heal, and only go ignored.
Just as I like my metaphors I also love mixing them. So while on the one side this mind-world is a dark room, on the other it is also an ashland. A great enveloping wasteland where it rains ash and all things are burned and scorched. This particular metaphor is useful because in this ashland there is a particularly big mountain. I have seen others climb this mountain so I know it can be done, I just never thought I could do it myself. You see, this is a big, gay old mountain. Yes - like Pandora, I also know how to keep secrets - my mind-world and struggles, and my being gay. I know there is nothing wrong with being gay, or even with hiding it so long. This is a journey we must make in our own time and way. But the problem is when it gets bound up in the spider web of mental illness, shame, self loathing, fear, isolation, and pain, and it becomes another brick to build my dark room with, and another bucket of water to throw inside where I sit.
This is the next curse of mental illness. It becomes impossible to confront one aspect of it without confronting all of it at once. This is a daunting task for anyone, let alone someone who actually carries the weight of these burdens. This brings us to the third metaphor - that of carrying a great weight. Like Atlas I have stood guarding the heavens, carrying the world on my shoulders. But like anyone knows, you can carry a heavy weight only so long and so far before it crushes you. Thus, through decades and over quicksand have I carried my dark room, my ashland, and my bricks. And as the waters in my room rose I desired once more to lay my burdens down.
The insidiousness of depression and mental illness in general lies in its abilities to turn your faculties against you. Thus I have resisted seeking help - how pathetic must I be that I need to pay someone to listen to my problems. This was one of the things I thought as I was doing the very bad thing we don't talk about. Now, it should be noted I have managed on a lower level to speak of a sliver of my struggle. Like the last sliver of a waning moon I revealed to my doctor some of my struggle, which is how I received my anti-depressant medication. Yet like all things this does not come without its own challenges. One in particular was how tired and useless it made me. I struggled to concentrate and still do, although for this reason I stopped taking it recently. The other problem is that such support is only meant to strengthen you for a while, while you seek assistance with deeper issues - the rest of the waning moon that was still hidden in darkness. This I have not yet done.
One of the many factors that have conspired in weaving this web I am intangled in is that my personality (INTP) is such that I generally balk at seeking the help of others, prefering to try solving puzzles on my own. Being an introvert is also part of this web. None of these things is problematic or bad on their own. But like chemicals they become dangerous when combined in certain ways.
Earlier I mentioned the foundations of my room. It is indeed true that these were set a long time ago. In fact I inherited them. Here too we find another great pit, family shame and reluctance to speak out about problems. We keep our radioactive poison within our family walls until it infects and kills us. We fear shame and derision. Yet even I in my dark room know that we are all human, and the secrets we keep only retain their power to frighten us when we keep them in the dark. Depression runs in my family and through each generation it has wrought its damage and spread its radioactive poison. My grandfather, as far as I know, drank himself to death due to depression, leaving his family in disarray. Depression then passed to the next generation, and while more successful in coping with it, his son and daughter still struggle with it to this day. Then it passed to the next generation. And here I am, like reactor number 4 at Chernobyl, with my enormous steel lid bouncing up and down from the steam pressure building inside as a runaway reaction builds exponentially in the core. Even speaking of these familial struggles will likely add even more heat to the core as everyone knows we shouldn't speak of it. Nobody utters this proscription aloud. It becomes tacit knowledge, adding to the structures which bind the agents who make the structures further. Being a social scientist did lend me some understanding after all it seems.
So, at long last and after many metaphors we arrive at the final station on a long train journey (yes another metaphor). Here I am, drowning in my own dark room, lost in my ashland, crippled by the weight I bear. Yet still standing despite it all. Despite generational foundations, despite a long history of bullying, despite being my own worst enemy, despite the silence, despite the sheer overwhelming burden of it all. A lone star in a faraway corner of the universe that refuses to go out. I know I must seek the professional help I so desperately need. I know I must, like an archeologist, uncover the buried bones and ruins in my mind. I must make peace with myself. But first I had to stop here for a moment and, for the first time, let the sun shine in and publicly say the things I have had to say. Perhaps social media is not the right place to do so, perhaps there will be those who preferred that my star go out in silence in a far flung corner of the cosmos. But despite everything I think I can admit that I'm strong, even very strong, and that I will continue to stand if I only will it. Most of all however, social media allows me to share my torment with others and it lets me say - you are not alone - both to myself and to others who are trapped in invisible whirlwinds. Perhaps I never needed to say this because perhaps others are stronger than I claim to be and they already know all these things. Perhaps I am the last to get the message because light can only travel so fast and I live so far away in the cosmos.
But despite it all, here it is, the testament of [voyager]. No doubt the dark web I am still trapped in will cause me to regret writing this, and even more so regret opening my Pandora's box to the world. But I who have faced death at my own hand know it is preferable - if my star is doomed at last - to go out in a supernova, and to shine, for a moment, brighter than a galaxy.
[I don't seek pity, or attention - as my dark web convinced me people would interpret my words - but simply desired to, at least, lay some of my burden down. Also, do not fear, I am not in danger at the moment, other than that of my shame and fear at writing this. It was, in the final instance, a testament to myself - I am here, and for a moment did something I never thought I'd be brave enough to do. Perhaps this is the start of a new journey towards healing.]
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