The Moment

"Upon pinching our pale skin, a barely audible question escapes from our mouth: 'How are we doing?' Silence. We listen to our breathing- it is shallow and pathetic. 'Are we all right?' Slowly we shake our head. We don't want to speak- not today anyway. 'Morning,' we whisper. The word flickers in our consciousness. 'How are we feeling today?' 'Not the best,' is the apathetic reply. 'Today's going to be another bad one,' we say stoically. We feel the violence of the vortex gather pace as it screams inside our body. We twist through its complexity and pound on our corporal self. As usual, questions concerning its authenticity bob up and down in our sea of pain. How do we really feel? The word doesn't describe our feelings- does it? Surely it's unimaginable to those who have not suffered with it? People walking down the street, students, friends-whatever-nonchalantly spew it out. It seems that the word, like a slug slithering innocuously through language and culture, leaves little trace of its intrinsic malevolence. Has it become so common in everyday language? Has it lost its depth, its meaning, and its feeling? Has it been hammered into banality? we think. As always, however, we struggle for answers while our mind becomes a cesspool of ominous thoughts. We become swamped in our(selves). The torture continues in our head. How can life be filled with such torpid indifference? The little things like taking our dog for a walk in the park on a warm spring day or playing football with our friends just aren't fun anymore. We breathe and walk, we just don't live. We are detached and hollow. Under our blanket of suffocating darkness, we pretend that everything is fine, yet, we rot away from the inside. At times it spews bits out. At times it swallows us whole. At times both. No warning, bang! We move from pain to pain. We have only one future. Please God, help, we plead as our huddled body rocks back and forth. Confused and afraid, we don't want to talk anymore. 'Please leave,' we gently sob." -The Abyss: Exploring Depression Through a Narrative of the Self (1999) Brett Smith, in Qualitative Inquiry, Vol. 5, No. 2, p. 265. "I got the letter," said Marcus flatly, "Thanks." Marcus' mother covered her mouth in embarrassment: "I forgot." "You forgot?! You wrote a suicide letter!" Marcus exploded incredulously. "Well," Marcus mother threw a furtive glance in his direction, "I didn't think I'd have to remember it, did I?" Breaking the ensuing awkward silence, Marcus mother inquired tentatively, "Did you read the part where I said I'd always love you?" "It's a bit hard to love me when you're dead, isn't it?!" "Sorry." Coming to sit across from him, she said, "I can understand why you're angry, Marcus...but," she shrugged, "I don't feel the same as I did yesterday, or the day before that." "What? It's all just gone away? All that?" Marcus' eyebrow lifted in disbelief. "Well, no," admitted Marcus' mother gently, "But, at the moment, I feel better." "The moment's no good to me," exclaimed Marcus angrily, "I can see you're better at the moment. But what happens when you finish your tea?" -About a Boy (2002) Universal Pictures, starring Hugh Grant. So, God granted my wish this time. Please, please don't let anyone find me. I swear I'm not suicidal, I'm just depressed... and crying so hard that every dead leaf and blade of grass surrounding my hidden sanctuary along the river bank is slimy with tears and snot... and I would totally call EMS immediately if I found someone in my present emotional state sitting alone this close to the Bow River... Weird. I can see the bridge where my High School art teacher stopped a woman from drowning herself in the night from here. She wasn't especially grateful for the intervention. I wasn't even there and I can hear her screaming for him to leave her alone, pushing away rescue, fighting for freedom from another day spent in the Abyss. "How are you doing, Faye?" my professor asked at our meeting that afternoon. I don't want to answer that question. Not to her. Not to myself. Not to anyone. Not again. In most urban places in North America, when someone asks, "What's up?" or "How're you doing?" the standard, polite response is: "Fine" or "All right" or "Okay." In the university culture, we don't like to stoop to such trite and mindless responses. Instead, our sophisticated and suave automatic responses include complicated combinations of: "Tired" and/or "Busy," smoothly expressed with either a hint of amused self-recrimination or martyr-like patience. Particularly in the small Christian college I attend, we're a sleep-deprived, financially-strapped, stressed-out lot. And proud of it. Among our favourite pass-times, we like to have one-up competitions to see who is writing the most papers, has the hardest professor to please, is working the most volunteer and part-time (or full-time) jobs on the side, taking the most courses simultaneously, borrowing the most money from the government, surviving on the most free coffee and bread hand-outs at school, dealing with the worst personal crises, etc. Then we roll our eyes at each other, laugh, and go check our cell-phone messages, e-mail, MSN, blog-site, or facebook account to do the same thing over again. The U of C is selling brilliant minds to deserving corporations right now, did you notice? But my professor looks at me when she asks that question. "I'm...tired." I look down at the floor and try to will my throat not to close on me. She's still looking at me. I don't want to shatter I don't want to shatter I don't want to shatter. She gets up, closes the door to her office, returns her seat, looks at me. "Ok, so what's really going on?"

My throat closes and I shatter.

She offers me a box of kleenex. She gives me a three week extension on the next part of my research project, and gives me pointers on how to succeed on assignments and exams for my other classes. She wants me to see the school counsellor, book an appointment with my GP- maybe I'm depressed or maybe I have low vitamin B, take the night off and spend some quality time with a good friend- tell them how I'm doing over some really good cheesecake. She reminds me of the importance of "self-care". I know this stuff. I give nearly identical variations of it to family members, friends, and complete strangers every week when we talk about anxiety, stress, loneliness, or the "d" word. "Your work is excellent, Faye," she says emphatically, waving the third draft of my research proposal to be submitted to the ethics review board at me. "You have a natural ability. I look at you and I see a young woman who, for the first time in the five years I've known her, is defeated: you're defeated in your own mind." I nod. I know she's right. I came to the same conclusion the day before while walking home alone from the c-train. In psychology, we call it "learned helplessness," which is the belief that no matter what you do (or don't do) you can't avoid failure. You have no control over your future. This is not a normal pattern of thinking for me. But this time, I just don't see a way out. I can't concentrate to do my work because I'm exhausted and I'm too afraid of failing at anything I actually start. I've already cut back on pretty much everything there is to cut from one's social life: I go to work for one shift a month and I volunteer for 2 shifts per month. I've stopped going to church, I choose one friend to hang out with for an evening every two weeks. I don't bother eating lunch. My exercise has been reduced to a 4 block daily walk with my arthritic and cancer-ridden dog who frequently needs to stop for rests. I'm perfectly aware that it is illogical for me to be so panicked about doing poorly on my assignments: I can count on one hand (a genetically modified hand with six or seven fingers instead of five) the number of instances I have scored less than 80% on something. It's just that 4 of those times occurred within the last year, and two of those within the last two months of my life, after I studied my heart out. I failed my first attempt at a driver's license a year ago (which tends to happen when you nearly mow down pedestrians and can't remember what to do at a four way stop), failed to make the school soccer team last year, barely passed the GRE, and barely passed my first unit exam in physiological psychology. Now, some of you are rolling your eyes and thinking of all sorts of geeky losers who claim to have done "terribly" on an exam, which for them means 70%. While I understand how this is ludicrous (and rude) to someone who feels fortunate if they can get a 70%, you need to understand that (1) psychology is easy and everyone in the program has a minimum average of 78% and (2) because psychology is easy and tends to pay a great deal, graduate programs weed out the students they don't have enough room for by demanding extremely high academic scores and practical experience. It's all or nothing stakes for geeks not quite smart enough for engineering, computer programming, astrophysics, or the biological sciences. And I realized suddenly that although my long-term life plans remain desirable to me, I really don't want to live through the next five years to get there. I also suddenly realized that I didn't have anyone to talk to- at least, no one available on the spur of the moment to just go for a two hour walk, chat, and a mocha (I work once a month- I can't afford cheesecake:). And I'm lonely. Which I feel ashamed to say, because for the first time in my life I have really loyal, genuine friends who are always asking me when we can hang out next and genuinely want to know how I'm doing. If I'm lonely this time, it's my own fault. And I'm ashamed of my fear. My head knows that God will be with me wherever I go, that I'm never alone, that God will give me what I need to be, go, and do what he wants. My head knows he wants more than just "fine," "okay," "tired," "busy," or the dreaded "depressed" for me. But I can't envision it in my future. And I sure as hell can't feel it in the present moment, though not for lack of effort on God's part to get it through to me: he had my friend Jen W. send me an email telling me I'd been on her mind and prayers lately and inviting me out to a nerdy artists fest (artists are great fun and I admit I really miss that scene), he had Amy send me a card and a carefully chosen assortment of gifts all the way from Scotland, he reminded me that these phases don't last forever by crossing my path with other people even more depressed than I am who felt encouraged after talking to me, he gave my mom time to go out for ice-cream with me, he gave me a phone call from Val, and a mid-night logical but sympathetic chat with my sister Melanie, and countless on-line gifts and hellos from friends like Jen F, Melanie Roe, Lisa, and others wondering where the duece I've gone. He gave me a tender moment while hugging my borrowed niece, Rylee, and a pretty sunset tonight before the familiar feelings of dread and hopelessness took me over in the sun-light's absence. He gave me an "I'm sorry to hear that" from Jordan, who really meant it, when I gave him the abbreviated version at Trevor and Melissa's wedding (which was incredibly entertaining, by the way). Actually, God regularly gives me beautiful and fun moments with my siblings, parents, and friends. And I appreciate them and am trying really hard to live in those moments when they come my way. They're just hard to hold on to while the rest of me reads the newspaper and nearly pukes because some cocaine addicted prostitutes in Vancouver decided to torture their friend for hours with a box cutter until she died. At this moment, I'm tired, I have a head-ache, I feel melancholy, and I'm disappointed with myself for not getting more accomplished today. My thoughts seem sluggish, fragmented, and ambivalent. But it's just a moment, and maybe the next one will be different.