Arrogant Depression

I'm not arrogant.

I get this rap because when I meet people I haven't seen for a week or three decades I don't glad-hand slap-back cackle and gush. I don't hug and ask after one's family and whatnot. Instead I nod my head, grin slightly from one side of my mouth (the right), say hello only, real laconic which can be experienced as ironic, showing no emotion whatsoever, which I'm sure is usually taken as stand-offish at best and don't care shit at worse. But I don't respond this way because I'm arrogant. I respond this way because I'm depressed.

Now I am stupid, in so many ways. That charge I accept, because I didn't really understand that I am depressed until 2002 (a decade now), while my first major depressive episode happened in the Fall of 1979. Back then, even though I had taken Intro to Psych the previous Spring, I never considered the mental anguish that suddenly crushed me halfway through Fall quarter to be depression. I just thought it was angst.

I was taking Intro to Philosophy that Fall, along with New Testament Greek and Creative Writing. For both Philosophy and Writing I had to journal daily (I've never been able to do anything daily), so I've got a lot of records from that time in a box somewhere if I want to check. But I remember pretty clearly. I remember one morning waking up in bed with several suspicions crystallizing into conviction, the conviction that ultimately everything gets annihilated - me, my family, Nancy (whom I had just started dating), this planet and all life on it, even everything that exists, all ends in annihilation. And when I said "annihilation" I meant and still mean a complete cessation, a complete end, in personal terms a total stoppage of all thought, mind, memory with nothing left over, nothing personal persisting after death. The same goes for human culture in cosmic terms, that the day draws daily nearer when our lovely planet and all on it will be consumed by the swelling sun as it transitions into its red giant phase, wiping off all trace of our long history. The same goes for the universe itself, whether with a bang or a whimper. Everything ends in death, and life will never conquer it.

With life vanquished, there goes any possibility for meaning. I lay in bed convinced this was Truth that Fall, and from then 'til now my conviction has rarely wavered: I've rarely seriously doubted it. That Fall, I resolved to stay in bed, just not get up and so starve or waste away, to give up entirely (of course, residence hall staff would have come looking for me eventually, Nancy first of all). I lasted a couple of hours before nature's call grew too insistent, so I got up to go and decided that I might as well stay up as long as I was up, and I've stayed up ever since.

Or at least partly up: for a year now, I've been pretty debilitated by a severe depressive episode, which makes it real hard to write this entry. But apart from the last year, if I look back honestly (and by "honestly" I mean not through depressed eyes, as much as that is possible) to 1979, I've lived my life as an expression of that root conviction: this is all meaningless. College was meaningless, so I dropped out after that Fall quarter and moved home to live with my parents. None of us realized I was seriously mentally ill. My relationship with Nancy was meaningless, so I rarely wrote or called or worked too hard on our relationship (that we're still together is so much a testimony to Nancy's graciousness). Church was meaningless, so I only showed up to sing (I can still sing, but even now I'm not convinced singing is not meaningless, so I don't pursue singing). College was still meaningless when I went back in 1981 and graduated in 1983, so I gave it half-effort (maybe I am arrogant: since my half-effort was so good, I wonder how my full-effort would shine) . . . well, I don't want to recapitulate in detail, but trust me, I've struggled all the years since (which includes four degrees, twelve years of ministry [and I will write later on faith and theology] and my current four years and growing hiatus) between my conviction that all this is ultimately meaningless and the assurance that such a conviction is the surest sign of my mental illness.

Depression is a mental illness. Next time I see one of you, remember: he's not arrogant, he's just depressed. Ten years of therapy and drugs shows how tenacious depression can be, at least in my case. Look, I know I should doubt my convictions, and I'm working real hard to do just that. I try to imagine the day when I wake up and experience, feel that life and love are meaningful, that annihilation does not conquer them, that the now overrides the then. Cognitively, I tell myself daily, "You might be wrong," and try really hard to believe that. I see the joy everybody else seems to find in life and I want that, I truly want to feel that way, too. Because if my convictions are right, tragically and ironically, mine is a dreadful way to live the one life I will ever have. And it's dreadful to inflict my convicted life on those I love.

OK, I must be arrogant after all, because finally I think I'm right about life and death when 95% of all people who are or ever were know I'm wrong. But that's mental illness, right there: stubbornly holding one's convictions in the face of all evidence to the contrary. I accept that. So I need your help. Next time you see me, tell me I'm wrong. Better yet, tell me how I'm wrong, tell me how you find meaning in life, how you stare down death, how love lasts beyond all mortal flesh. Testify bravely, boldly, knowing that under this wry, dismissive exterior lives one who wants a new life so badly, who wants your joy and hope and anticipation for tomorrow. Thank you for reading.