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Tuesday May 8, 2007
Category: DepressionWriters (and All Artists) as Ex-Suicides
I mentioned in my "Depression--The Full Monty" post that one way of triumphing over despair is by an act of kenosis, or self-emptying. As Soren Kierkegaard would say, of becoming "transparent under God."This is what Walker Percy means when he refers to writers like himself as ex-suicides. In a fascinating article entitled "Walker Percy and Suicide," published in the journal "Modern Age," John F. Desmond writes the following:
"[Percy] maintained that the writer...'starts with himself as nothing and makes something of the nothing with things at hand...a novelist these days has to be an ex-suicide.' The writer as ex-suicide becomes a 'nought' before the challenge of the blank page, which opens him to the possibilities of finding an authentic 'self' by discovering a true voice and naming reality.
"For Kierkegaard, one form of despairing 'suicide' is silence before reality, which he termed 'shut-up-ness' (I like that!). Thus, Percy saw writing as a way to overcome despair by emptying the egoist self in order to create a bond of communion with the reader. For author and reader, literature that honestly names the truth of being can reverse--albeit temporarily--the death-in-life alienation and despair. Writer and reader become 'ex-suicides' in humility before the truth."
Filed Under: Recovery
posted by Beyond Blue @12:00pm Permalink 
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I used to be very philosophical about my problems with depression and hypomania (I have cyclothymia, sometimes called 'soft bipolar'). Then I thought, this problem is as physical as having heart disease or arthritis. It has nothing to do with my soul or my spirit. My mom and a niece have the same problem. So I decided to ditch the philosophy and spirituality of it and treat it like a physical illness. A friend who has lupus often has to nap for 2-3 hours an afternoon or she is dead the next day. So when I am exhausted by depression I take a nap too. Why should lupus mean it's okay but not depression? And if I want to stay up and play videogames all night because I am hypomanic, then I stay up all night, the same way a person with insomnia stays awake. This approach allowed me to dump a lot of the guilt and the crap I kept telling myself about how awful I was to have this problem. As Mitch Hedberg used to joke: Alcoholism is the only disease where people yell at you for having it. No one would ever say, "Dammit, Otto, you have lupus!!" You could say the same thing about mental illness. Keep your chin up Therese, and keep in mind that it's a physical problem and not a spiritual one. There's nothing to forgive. Peace.
Posted by: Jennifer | May 28, 2007 12:22 AM
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