Week 12. Pools of Water. Pools of Want. Pools of nothing.

Watching the Wheels: A journal of depression treatment.

Week 12. Pools of Water. Pools of Want. Pools of nothing.

Last month I had to buy a new car as I was hit by someone who pulled out and totaled my 2019 VW Jetta. I had made the final payment in the fall, looking forward to not having a car payment for a few years was a relief. On the advice of my ex-wife and zealous son I test drove a used 2022 BMW. It was out of my price range, but I ended up buying it because I loved the sound system, and the VW upgrade I was looking at was only 3k less. Conflicted about buying such a luxury car I told my daughter who informed me that I was on the “wrong side of the class-war.” She was half joking. I was not raised to be materialistic, and as a whole I’m not. My luxury items are books and records, and even though I worked in record stores for nearly 20 years, most of which I didn’t have to buy any records I still spend at least $50 a week on these black circular pieces of vinyl. Luxury. The rest of the time, I spend money on my children, go out to eat too much, and try to save. I give money to charity, my time to charities and my professional life is devoted to helping connecting people. I love being a social worker, educator and doing other work for the homeless. I am prone to giving things away, records, tee-shirts, food, because both my mother and father both instilled the importance of helping others. The past few years I have been trying to work on my money management, as my therapist has suggested one of the last areas of self-growth is being financially stable. This is not in the realm of capitalism but in terms of allowing that part of me that “feels” that he doesn’t deserve stability, does in fact and not having to live pay-check-to-paycheck in my mid-fifties is one of the final ways to providing this for myself.

We grew up poor, or maybe I should say, lower-middle class. My mother married a lot, and there was some financial stability from her various husbands but not much and for many years it was just her, myself and two siblings. There were years where my mother and sister shared a bed or my sister slept on the couch, my brother and I sharing the other bedroom. In 6^th grade I slept on a cot next to my brother’s bed. My sister did not have the opportunity to have her own space in high school, no hanging posters of her celebrity crushes—no Springsteen posters, no Kurt Vonnegut quotes on the wall, no hidden bong in a closet she didn’t own. The same goes for my brother and I until we got to high school, there in my own space I was able to hang posters of my favorite bands. Often times these bands didn’t have posters so I would tear pictures and advertisements out of Rolling Stone and Spin magazines. On my door was a photo of Chrissie Hynde from Rolling Stone wearing leather pants with a bad-ass smirk on her face, Lou Reed leaning on a Honda Scooter from an ad, and a braless Patti Smith staring deadpanned into the camera. I had boombox above my bed, a small but growing stash of records next to it and a tiny paperback collection on a small metal shelf. I was trying to make my mark in my own world, my idols were inspirations not necessarily people I wanted to fuck.

After graduating grad school at the age of 41 I was able to get a job making more money than I thought was possible for myself. Married, my spouse also had a middle-class income working for the university, but I still mismanaged my money. I didn’t drink but other vices and mismanagement drained my bank account as well as driving a wedge within myself. I kept getting better and rewarding jobs, moving into Director positions and when I finally went back to therapy after 14 years sober my therapist told me I was right on time for what I needed to work on. Intimacy. Not sex. But intimac, although I assumed it was sex but it was much more than that. This was almost nine years ago. Work. Unraveling. Tearing apart the biscuit.

Shortly after my divorce six years ago I started experiencing suicidal ideations. I have written about some of this in my blog, but they became louder and louder. At one point a few years ago I got into a large lake at the end of March to see how it felt, staying in as long as I could while freezing rain blew in my face. It was Easter, I had driven to see my mother and stepfather who would both be dead within a couple of short years. While my young nephew and niece looked for Easter eggs in their front lawn I felt desperately alone. With own children in Columbus, I got to witness the joy my sister had with watching her grandchildren explode with the surprise of finding multi-colored eggs, digging into Easter baskets, smiling at the encouragement from their parents, grandparent, great grandparents. Connecting. I drove back to Columbus in the middle of a powerful storm, skipped my exit and didn’t pick up my children at their mothers. She buzzed me. I ignored it. My mother called. I ignored it. Other people called. I ignored it. After getting out of the water, drying off with my underpants and putting my clothes back on in the car. I listened to music. I cried. I called my ex and said I was in no condition to pick up the kids. That night I sat in bed and cried some more. I had no idea why.

There are moments now when the feeling or a better word to use is the ache of life pummels me from the inside. I would say it is a gut-punch, but I don’t want to use that term, so it is more like I feel like a battered soccer ball. A leathery outer shell with kicks, grass stains and small fraying stitching, inside under that skin is a thousand kicks that have pummeled the ball over and over. Bruised, bumped. Sometimes when it is towering towards the sky it feels free, while other times waiting 20 from the goalie for it to be kicked. The kicker is the hero. The ball is the ball. I imagine that ball is tired. Weathered.

When the ache comes up, at times startling me as if I just walked into a street sign, I can physically wince. My knees buckle. On very few occasions I may cry silently. Most times I shake it off like when my dog accidently hits her face on the table or a tree branch. Can’t cry about it, can’t even rub it. Just four little paws with slits for fingers. My bruises are deep. This is what I realize as I gaze backwards while trying hard not to trip on my past, trying not to recollect somethings that were not what they always seemed to be. Childhood. Broken hearts. Parenthood. Jobs. Love.

A few years ago, I was talking with someone about truth. Black and white. There is the truth and there is the not truth. A truth and a lie. The conversation went back and forth while I made the argument that truth is on a spectrum, that what we experience influences our perceptions. What we ingest in the form of information, knowledge, words, art, food, intoxicants all influence the lenses we use to process the world around and within us. Thus the truth is at times subjective. Of course this is not the case for everything, but there are factors that I think are important to consider as I look back and forward in my life. I envision the world, the universe with billions, trillions, infinity even (Heaven’s to Murgatroyd, even) of different lenses that each being experiences and sees the world. And for many they may be missing sight, the ability to hear, the ability to use verbal language, all of this and everything all at one, all together, morphing changes our views. Our truth. My own truths about my mother, my father, my siblings and the ones I have loved deeply have changed, even how I view myself. Once incredibly confident, or so I thought---this confidence fortified by alcohol and the women in my life, to one who wants to see deeply. To be able to slide into the layers of the present, into the small gaps that make everything just… BE. To be both soft and sturdy. To be vulnerable but not in pain. Which brings me back to quantum physics and my treatment.

I am not a scientist (with apologies to Bob Pollard) but I love science although I can barely make it through a Scientific America article without feeling dumber than when I started the article (yes, I know this is the opposite of what reading should do.) And since I love quantum physics, the universe and history this is what Apple News keeps feeding me. I gobble these articles up like a middle-aged Pac-Man. My Buddhist practice has given me the opportunity to try to work at being non-judgmental, that the universe and life is not so much a hierarchy but that it just…is. All connected. All at once. Pulsating. Giant heart beats stretching from the smallest of the small to the largest of the large. No separation. Just. Is. And in this non-hierarchy there is us, me who feels so deeply and continues to suffer under some illusions of my mind, my own experiences, my own lenses. We are also our own DYI selves, free to explore. It is then that I realize nothing is still. Not even this period. (that one, next to this—both sides of this sentence.)

One of the Four Noble Truths is the Cause of Suffering, which is basically the more I try to find a way out of my pain I end up causing more pain. One beer is too many and anything after is never enough. You can’t eat just one chip. Etcetera and so forth. When I got sober, I so very much wanted the compulsion to drink to fall away like the leaves on a tree in the fall. The wanting was my shackles. There were times when I would sit in an AA meeting angry at the others in the room who were actually smiling, “fuck you” I thought, I wanted what they had but I did not trust it. I didn’t trust them. I didn’t trust myself. But eventually, the scales fell off of me and a few years later I realized I no longer had the daily compulsion to drink. Emphasizing the daily, as I was to learn over the next 23 years that I have other compulsions to feel differently. I want to not want. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. The wanting is the pain. The dopamine hit isn’t always worth it.

The Cessation of Suffering is the freedom on not engaging. Not even feeling the need to. What a fucking concept. Something I firmly believe is that nothing is permanent, nothing is still. Not my thoughts. Not my memories. Not the flames whipping from the surface of the sun, licking the emptiness around it for millions of miles. Not the notes that ring in my ears of the songs that I hold so dear. Not the future that slides before me as if it were made of five million escalators in a row. I am trying to clean my lenses to better see all the truths.

Acceptance.

The last two Spravato sessions were not as intense as some of others but there was deep unravelling. At times when I go in there is some hesitation before I take the medication, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth but also the sheer intensity of it can be emotionally exacting, always rewarding but difficult because I am unsure of where it will take me except that it will be revealing. I pictured the ocean washing upon the rocks, small tide-pools that were covered in salty water, bubbles forming on the ends of the wave and against the rocks. Small creatures scurrying bewildered about what was happening as they were lifted up and about by the water. Oh, here comes another wave! The rocks shiny as the water pulled away, sun glistening off of them for a moment, brown, purple and orange hues shining for a brief moment before the next wave. More creatures, more scurrying, hiding, burrowing. I was then in the deeper sea, all at once as the water grew deep and tall, chilly and warm at the same time. All those beings above and below. I was with you in your bed. We were folded into one another, holding each other in our arms, we cried as we melted, smiling. I was at peace. I trusted. I was a river flowing through South America, with fifteen thousand trees leaning over my banks, muddy water pooling in small circles while insects skipped of the top of the water making expanding circles in the seemingly otherwise calm waters.

I thought of my first love Jenny. How alive she made me feel nearly forty years ago. I was there again, we laughed, and I felt her love unconditionally. It was there, those early days of the relationship, me all of seventeen and more broken than I would have ever known feeling her love and acceptance of me. The encouragement she gave me. Then, the relationship was more equal. It was years before I became one the many caregivers within our community to help keep her alive. To help alleviate her suffering. We all suffered. I felt her in the moment, thirty-nine years later. I felt the look you gave me while driving across the Netherlands, laughing at my jokes. Dad jokes before I was a dad. I felt your toes poking mine in the sand in North Carolina, shy feet exploring what comes next. I felt your hesitation to hug me as I clutched the bottom of your skirt, my hands wrapped around you, smelling your perfume as I asked you not to leave me alone in another school. I felt you on top of me, telling me not to shut the drapes, a wild look in your eyes. I felt your hug on the airplane as you ran back down the aisle to hold me as I got ready to for take-off, back to my mother’s house. I felt your fingers intertwined in mine as we walked the streets of your neighborhood, taking turns at pointing at the clouds. I could get used to this, I thought. I felt your small fingers in mine as I reached into the back seat while I drove, your small voice asking me questions. Maybe now you realize, I know very little of anything. I want to tell you how much I love you. I want you to let me know it is all ok. Whatever is is. I want to want to be that person. For my children. For my people. For me. I want to not want. But….I do laugh easily. My heart is a drumbeat, another song. So many.

Next week is my final week of treatment. The voice of suicide has grown smaller, ebbing away.