Dear God,
Thanks for reminding me today in the reading from the Book of the Prophet Habakkuk (1: 2-3, 2: 2-4) that I need to write down my vision—so that I can see that it really will come to fulfillment, even though all I feel right now is disappointment and discord. You promise that if I hang in there, and record what’s in my heart, that I will eventually get there.
Two years ago I didn’t believe you. Every morning, I recorded five things for which I was grateful—Starbucks coffee, a husband who hadn’t left me, two kids that had four limbs each, two Lab-Chow mutts that didn’t have diarrhea like the rest of the family, and, of course, Hershey’s dark chocolate with almonds.
Each afternoon, I’d jot down five things that I had accomplished: peeled a banana, made four cups of strong coffee, took the kids to the park without crying, wrote my gratitude list, and almost completed my list of accomplisments.
And then in the evening, I cataloged all my negative thoughts ("I am weak," "I am stupid," "I am lazy," "I am a bad mom," "I can’t write," "I have bad gas") on the left side of my journal. On the right side, I used the "examine the evidence” technique (one of those cognitive-behavioral exercises I learned to help me untwist my distorted thinking) to arrive at a list of positive qualities (my nose is cute, my fingernails are thick, my acne cleared up after I went on Acutane in the nineth grade).
I also wrote down my vision: if I survive this nightmare, want to help other people who live in this hell.
I recorded that vision over and over again like a first grader who, held in detention, had to write "I will never throw rocks at pigeons" 500 times. In capital letters.
And just like the prophet Habakkuk, I cried to you, "How long, O Lord? I cry for help, but you do not listen I cry out to you, 'Violence!', but you do not intervene."
And you repeated to me exactly what you said to Habakkuk:
Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets [although I still don’t see what you mean there], so that one can read it readily. For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late. The rash one has no integrity; but the just one, because of this faith, shall live.
So, God, what is it about recording the vision—writing it down—that leads us to its fulfillment?
Does it have something to do with becoming an ex-suicide? Not a person who has attempted suicide, but what novelist Walker Percy called "ex-suicides": writers overcoming despair by emptying themselves onto paper (and into the Internet) and forming a bond of communion with the reader in the pursuit of the truth?
Am I trying to escape despair by what Christian existentialist Soren Kierkegaard described as a self-emptying before God, a becoming "transparent under God," a spilling out my guts in order to find out who I really am, somewhat like Humpty-Dumpty after the fall?
I think all of this time with a pen and my computer (and tech support) is ultimately about getting to the truth. That’s really why I write: to get to the guts of things, in their raw form (without make-up), and in so doing I hope that I stumble upon the Beatific Vision, or at least a quick glimpse of God, that I somehow will run into rapture.
I write to form some connections in a network of people and places and things that don't make sense, to see the pattern in chaos, and to steal a minute or two away from Chuck E., the life-size rat at the pizza joint, and Toys-R-Us and Blue’s Clues to ponder the bigger questions; that I might be able to reflect ever so briefly on the redemptive powers of being
nearly pecked to death by little people needing to know what EXACTLY we are going to include in each "Little Mermaid" goodie bag at a birthday party 21 days away, and where we can find the right mask for a teenage mutant ninja turtle Halloween custome.
To write is to preach, as my writer friend Brian Doyle once wrote: "Because writers are deep in their souls didacts who itch to deliver the Unvarnished Truth and cannot help but unburden themselves of that which burns in their hearts."
I write from deperation, that’s true. For the same reasons Anne Lamott explains in "Bird by Bird": "[Writing] is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong." Yup, she’s right when she says that writing can give you what having a baby can: attention to detail and softness. (Because they both hurt.)
Or maybe I write hoping that one or more words of mine will make it into someone’s heart, and will make her feel less alone and more hopeful about tomorrow. That the chains of depression and anxiety might loosen, if only for a moment, so that she can enjoy a slight reprieve from sadness. That I can do with lanugage with my priest friends do on the altar—make people look up, in praise and in supplication, and form a communion of people that can help each other by their common experiences.
Or maybe I’m just trying to become a better person myself—by getting all of it down—so that, like a map, I’m aware of the desired destination: to be a loving friend, a devoted mom, a faithful wife, a kind daughter, and an honest writer.
Brian (my writer-friend) nailed it with this:
Maybe if I work hard enough [at my writing] it’ll pour out straight and true and strong, and it’ll matter, it’ll change things, it’ll hit people in the heart, it’ll make them cry, change the way someone acts, stop a man from cracking his son across the face, give a moment of quivering tranquility to a woman in despair, make a girl laugh.
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Margaret:
No need to disguise your life stories -- memoirs are all the rage these days (and, as I think I've disclosed, I'm slowly working on my own). People eat them up -- there's plenty of room in the market for both of us. (And a lot of the material for Therese's books has been autobiographical, for that matter ...)
BTW, much as I have come to absolutely love Therese (both as a writer and as a human being), let's not put TOO much pressure on her. Remember, ultimately, she's in the same boat as we are :-(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explanatory_style
this may really help you therese
Therese,
Thank you for writing. Thank you for living. Thank you for sharing your life and growth.
You make a difference.
From my perspective on things, you have fulfilled your big hope. You help those of us who are struggling with different forms of depression and anxiety.
Keep doing what you're doing, but please be kind to yourself, too.
Enemy
Depression, I fear you. You have brought me low. Many times you have driven me to despair, gripped by a cold, wrenching fear from my gut to my spine. I fear you more than death, there is an ending in death but there seems no hope in your ever ending. To put depression to an end one must regain one’s will, for in depression one’s entire will is taken up in just surviving, there is no will left for living.
I fear your spells of anger, the ones where I am so near the edge, the edge of madness and violence. I fear you most of all. Even a hint of you is fearful for I know you can grow quickly, fed by my fear and lifelong attitudes
Perhaps I will never be completely free from you but if I can learn what makes you grow and stay and thrive maybe I can diminish you to a place where the drugs will make you seem to go away. As it is they only seem to take the edge off. I’m still depressed, I’m still scared, anxious. And sometimes I just can’t take it anymore and I’m walking up the hill outside my house screaming ultimatums at God about help and healing... and it helps. I feel better, the next day is easier. I thank God for one good day and manage to struggle through one more week.
I always look to the weekend to be healing but too often it feels just like the rest of the week there’s just not the demands on my time, not as many tasks to do. I still feel anxious, depressed, despair is not far away, I’m just not pushed, there is less stress... in some ways. Sundays are the worst and the best day. I seem to often have attacks of anxiety and near psychosis on sundays. Though they can take a couple of hours in coming these attacks are mercifully short in their intense stage and afterwards I generally feel quite good. As though I’ve conquered some demon from out of the depths of my mind. But depression, you are still my enemy. I fear you more than death.
I have learned that anger suppressed feeds my depression. I realized recently I still have much suppressed anger towards my first wife. She abused me in every possible way, used me up, drove me mad, and let me go when I was of no more use. I loved her, something in me still does. Perhaps that is why I sometimes feel I could actually harm her, something I didn't do when we were together. I have prayed often recently to be able to forgive her, It is slowly being granted but not until I began to express the anger in bold black letters on my sketch pad and computer. Long diatribes of violence, painfully drawn out of my heart in tears. I am spent. I ask my God is that enough? I get the sense it is not. The only thing I can thank her for is she drove me trembling and broken to the feet of Christ at the same time she drove me mad. I escaped to Christ, He was palpably near as I slipped into psychosis, a calm gentle presence nearby or within as reality shifted toward evil. He was with me, keeping the essential me intact even as my personality splintered, spun, and cried so desperately for freedom for the captives that I was chained. I cling to Him now. Still. Always. Whenever my grip upon Him is loosened and I slip, my life loses balance and meaning. I sink.
She was pathologically jealous. Every blink of my eye was punished as a look at another woman. Every emotion I expressed was chastised as wrong. When I expressed no emotion I was cold and heartless and "dead". I was allowed no friends, no family, no money. She demanded absolute fidelity and truth on her terms, terms shifting and impossible to meet. I can say quite literally I could do nothing right and things I had nothing to do with were judged to be my fault, evidently on some supernatural plane. She herself was free from all restrictions. She lied easily, more often than she told the truth. small lies and grand, involved schemes of interconnecting lies. Every day we fought, she attacked in blunt or subtle ways but consistantly punishing me for imagined evils. Once or twice a month there would be the exceptionally cruel battles that would eventually drive me out into the night to walk for hours and sleep in hallways or laundramats. She would seek me out never letting me go, but letting me rest a bit when I had been gone a day or two. She would be kind for a bit. She feared losing me. I was her support as well as her foil and target. I looked good next to her. She often threatened suicide should I leave. Somehow I loved her. She was exempt from her demands of absolute fidelity as she was often unfaithful. She had at least three abortions. This does not count the time, early on when she had me acquire money for one and then used the money to pay rent. I doubt any of the pregnancies were from my loins.
In the end she entered into the New Age and channeled the spirits that drove me over the edge. That is another tale. The anger seems to be dissipating a bit. Writing helps.
Reading Therese has encouraged me to take up writing about my depression again. I too am Catholic and know the reading she refers to. Pain flows through me when I write of these things. I thought for a while I should leave it al in the past, but it is still affecting my present, so I write again.
madspirituality@blogspot.com
The first time I read the B.B. post I went and wrote a four page catharsis on my "so called life". I recalled memories, even some of the suppressed ones, and drained my tear ducts and made some true confessions. An amazing relief followed! I didn't realize before what a release it could be. I am very grateful for the chance to share my feelings with other depressives. Although I used to feel inadequate for not being all my mother thought I should be. When her friends when over ( you know the ones whose son is a doctor and daughter a lawyer) and I am just a Horse trainer. "You should have become a vet!" Because what and who I am is an embarrasment to her. Yet I am the one who she unloads all her life's regrets and problems on because in her words "I can take it". I feel like I'm living that Kelly Clarkson song "Because Of You" To which I can add my own lyrics. "Do I look bionic? You must think I'm made of steel!" You pour out all your pain on me till I'm too numb to feel!" I may take up songwriting at some point. I am just an artist whose medium is pain...I got nothing left to lose and all the world to gain!
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