Cascade

The footings begin to give way under the cold veneer of surface ice before collapsing completely and making way for the shattered pieces from above to cascade downhill like a wave gathering upon itself and crashing toward the beach. And you try to swim out from under as the avalanche overtakes you, but your own taut skin hems you in and and tingles from the piercing cold.
So began the approach toward electroconvulsive therapy, wires driven down through the layers under which I was buried, providing enough of a thaw to stave off suffocation. Recently an article about the late Townes Van Zandt said he had survived ECT. Alas, he couldn't outlive self-destruction, but the characterization of him as being an ECT survivor struck me, for I, too am that. But I pondered whether I considered myself in that light. Yes, I've thought of myself as a survivor, but of life in general, not specifically of a broken home or a questionable upbringing or meddling priests or 20 different medications or of electroshock therapy. They have made up my life. Just as I didn't consider the absence of a father as anything particularly abnormal, I thought ECT was the natural progression of a process I had begun in an effort to shake free of the depression.
At least that's what I think I thought. Witnesses exist who might provide a different account, but their views came from the outside. But to call it a natural progression is not to discount the emotional toll or the haze through which I subsequently have had to peer when recalling that time. I periodically felt ravaged by ECT and less than sanguine, and it had a greater emotional impact than protracted experimentation with medication, in part because of its temporal concentration.
My perspective has evolved, however, with additional exposure to a side of life that could be considered the polar opposite. Having had ECT makes me unique among my peers, and they weren't bothered by it; if we all had 12 beers, everything would be all right. But now I have kids, and they go to school and absorb information like sponges and sleep over friends' houses and fight with each other and laugh and play sports. And they're not exposed to violence and drug dealing and drug using and a general atmosphere of lunacy. Through them, I've received exposure to a side of life that at one time would have been as familiar to me as a Maori existence. I haven't become completely immersed in that life, and I can't fathom that I ever will, but it has demonstrated to me, like I'm watching a movie on a screen, that not everyone would consider a natural progression as I would. Okay, so being an ECT survivor makes me unique among a certain set. Apparently Ernest Hemingway and Judy Garland had it, too. That might not bode well. Speaking of Judy Garland, could anybody help but fall in love with her in "The Wizard of Oz"? But then things got a little messy.
So, what was I like in and around the time of my brush with destiny? As far as I can gather, if people who had never experienced depression suddenly became depressed, they would long for their worst day when they were "normal." The lack of an escape hatch proved troubling. I needed to get away from myself but couldn't. Drinking didn't give me that evacuation route. Antidepressants weren't working. You can't escape yourself. Unless you kill yourself, I guess, but with my luck, there actually would be an afterlife, and I would have fucked myself for all eternity by committing a mortal sin.
It becomes a cliche after a while. Depression haunts me, and I get tired of myself. And bored with it all. Tired of being in pain but not wanting to be a drama queen. And faring better than some people, anyway. Then I worry that I'm being a whiner. When virtually every day that you can recall consisted of a struggle, a fatigue element certainly exists. The weight of decades tests the limits of resilience. On the dash of my car rests a button labeled "ECT." When engaged, the button activates some kind of additional power reservoir for the engine, and the driver can accelerate more quickly. I used to think that if I could plug myself into the cigarette lighter and engage the ECT button for home electroconvulsive therapy, I could give myself a maintenance treatment every once in a while.
Maybe during those I'm-a-cliche-to-myself times, support from people familiar with my perspective mattered most. Getting over oneself, overcoming the notion that people shouldn't want to spend time with you, allowing them to make decisions for themselves in that regard and not supposing that you know what is best for them, presents a formidable challenge. Not wanting to be around myself, I questioned why others would. Nevertheless, support from those people mattered, though that wasn't always apparent to the support providers. I sometimes kept people at a distance, as much to turn away from my old, tired self as to keep them at bay. My fatigue and disgust led me to a sometimes insular existence, perhaps as part of a self-defense mechanism designed to preclude additional pain. Somewhere within the depression literature, I read that sometimes a depressed person should rely on others' judgment with respect to behavior. In other words, if you're too fucked up to recognize how fucked up you are, you should listen to someone else. That can be a slippery slope. If the person to whom you turn for guidance about your fuckedupedness has always been telling you how fucked up you are, then that particular avenue might not be the one down which to travel. On the other hand, if someone has judgment that you've deemed prudent in more lucid moments, then that might be the person or people on whom to rely.
I, somewhat necessarily consumed with myself, don't think I stopped to consider then the perspectives of other people involved in my life during the dark stretches of Amazonian depth and range. What must it have been like for them? Most commonly, the people in this situation have felt helpless. As I've gotten a little older, my perspective has undergone somewhat of a realignment, with children the primary force behind the adjustment, and I've attempted to assess the difficulties people in my life must have encountered in trying to penetrate an intensely personal experience. I look back through 16 years' worth of nebulae and the further accumulation of experience, and I'm appreciative of their forbearance. My mother at least kept track of the bills, which probably distracted her from considering too disturbingly that upon her son every other day were being visited sedation, restraint and electricity.
I can see myself now in a different light because the children can see me with relatively untainted perspectives. They've only known me as their father, a comparatively stable presence in their lives. An inevitable legacy from the past persists, but the bearing it has on now need not always be destructive.
As part of a management class group exercise in college, the professor told us to come up with a word to describe ourselves, how we would like to be remembered. "Tenacious," I said. That drew some oohs and aahs from my classmates. "Good word, good word." Those fuckers wished they thought of it first, but, not being as tenacious as me, they didn't. The instructor also told us to come up with a phrase, or a personal slogan, that we would want to use to communicate something about ourselves. I didn't know this was coming, but I thought about my mother, and I said to my fellow classmates: "It's not my fault." I kind of surprised even myself. Unfortunately, the recognition that I considered myself culpable when outcomes failed to please, particularly the women in my life, didn't provide a runway down which I would travel on my journey to self-awareness and healing. Not then, anyway. If it had, life as I know it would be much different.
Even when depression hurled me headlong toward ECT, I shouldered blame. I failed, and shame washed over me. No longer am I ashamed. And it really wasn't my fault. For some people, the stigma and shame associated with depression persist, and they can't bring voice to their frustration. "Don't worry 'bout a thing, every little thing gonna be all right." I guess, if you're smoking ganja all the time. "Don't worry, be happy." Fuck that guy and that stupid fucking song.
Warren Buffett says he hit the genetic lottery by being born in the United States. He contends that his U.S. citizenship conferred upon him advantages unavailable to people in less developed countries. That point of view has a certain validity when considering life from an economic perspective, as he has been inclined to do. But being born in the U.S. doesn't automatically bestow riches, material or spiritual, on everyone. Obviously. But the point is that there can be tremendous disadvantages inherent in being born into a particular family in a particular place. I guess I, at least, haven't been a depressed Chinese coal miner, but I think I would rather feel okay most of the time and have less access to what the West commonly provides, for it doesn't necessarily a happy man make. I once heard Paul McCartney say that if he had had to live through what John had to live through to write the songs that John wrote, he wouldn't have taken the deal. Touche.