What It's Like: Mornings

What's it like? What does it feel like?

When I wake up in the morning, depression is the first thing I think about. It comes to with the return of consciousness as I place myself in the here and now: my bedroom, my bed. My first thoughts are: Am I okay? How am I feeling today? Is it bad? Am I in pain?

On most days the answer is, Not too bad, which I know really means: Too soon to tell.

On bad days, the return to consciousness is met with a kind of blank wall of despair, sadness, and pain, and my response is, Please, not yet! Don't let me wake up yet!

But consciousness is relentless, a miserable cripple who needs to be bathed and fed and taken to the bathroom, and it insists. If it's a good day or an average day, my essential sadness is tinged with a kind of aggressive bitterness or anger over my condition, and I might be able to use that anger to get myself up and out of bed. There's the promise of coffee and a first cigarette and the small rush of energy the caffeine and nicotine bring. I put on a tee-shirt, get my pants from yesterday, and put on my robe. Sad to say, but slipping on some socks is more than I can handle at this point, as that involves sitting back down on the bed and bringing one foot into my lap and putting the sock on, and then the other foot, and so on and so forth, images that suddenly become quite real and detailed, and just seem unacceptably difficult.

Let me talk about this for a minute, because this putting-on-my-socks issue is at once so silly and so trivial, so stupid, so contemptible, and at the same time, so monumentally difficult that serves as a symbol of the whole sad pathological state of depression.

I have no need to put socks on, other than to keep my feet warm while I go downstairs. I'm not going out, not going anywhere, not going to put my shoes on, and who gives a shit if my feet are cold? That's my business. Putting them on takes effort, attention, a certain amount of concentration, all of which are actually painful to me at this hour.

I've had days when I sat on the bed and thought about putting my socks on for a good 5 minutes, sitting there, staring at them. Should I? Shouldn't I? That's a lot of work. I'm overweight. It' s uncomfortable pulling my foot up into my lap. I get self-cnscious, start talking to myself: What's wrong with me? Why am I even thinking about this? Just do it. Or don't. Can't you make up your mind? Why can't you make up your mind? You worthless sack of crap! God! You really are crazy. You need to be institutionalized. Decide already! Come on, do it. The discipline will do you good. Discipline? Am I kidding? I need so much more discipline than this that this doesn't even count...

And it's strange. Somehow putting my socks on is like making a definite commitment to start the day, to go and meet it and get on with it, and at this point I just don't feel ready for that. Now that i think of it, I suppose I've made a deal with myself. I'll agree to put on my t-shirt and pants and robe just to cover myself up while I go downstairs and have my coffee and cigarette. But I reserve the right to come back to bed if I feel too bad and try to get back to sleep--what I call, "performing a reset", hoping that I'll reawaken feeling better. Putting on socks makes too much of a commitment to the day. It cuts off my line of retreat.

So I go downstairs barefoot and my feet freeze.

You really want to read this pitiful stuff?

If it's a good day, that means I still have amphetamines left: medicine, relief. I keep them on the computer desk, which I suppose is my Stimulant Central. I pop a couple, wash them down with hot coffee, and light a cigarette. I fire up the computer. If bad thoughts and painful feelings are assailing me, I ignore them, because this is a period of grace.

Fuck them. I took my medicine. Help is on the way.

I have the image of what's going on as a medieval army (depression) starting their attack on the castle of my mind, and at this time, waiting for my meds to kick in, I can pretty easily defend things, going around the battlements in my robe with my coffee and cigarette, kicking over their scaling ladders with my sockless feet.

I lose myself in the news that comes up on my computer. Somehow I ended up with AOL news and I used to hate it for being shallow and too fluffy, but now I relish it. I have to be very careful with what I read, especially at this early hour, and the wrong kind of material can send me spiraling into a state of painful despair way out of proportion to its real import. It's a feature of my depression that I'm pathologically sensitive to the most ridiculous and unexpected things, and reading the wrong kind of news piece can send my emotions careening wildly out of control while I'm powerless to stop them. (In fact, it's one of my theories that a big part of my depression is caused by this emotional hypersensitivity and instability and my concomitant inability to get them back under control. The image I have is of a giant, massive pendulum that suddenly starts oscillating crazily, and me with no way to damp these wild swings or restore any kind of equilibrium...)

But so I look at the news stories: mostly things about celebrities I don't know and their problems, or stupid things people have done; cooking tips, ugliest cars, worst songs. I look for stories about failure, pain, futility, disappointment. Those are quite acceptable. Stories about success, about people realizing their dreams, about great places to retire or visit-- I have to avoid these, because I know they describe things that are closed to me. I will never have success, never realize my dreams, never be able to retire, or travel, or take joy in anything, because I'm basically a worthless, valueless, piece of shit, and I no longer have the capacity to feel pleasure.

Now, I suppose at this point I could use my Cognitive Behavioral Therapy training to make a list of why I really do deserve to achieve success and this and that, and identify with the positives n the news, but I just can't. I know it's a lie. If I were capable of doing something now in terms of working toward a goal or trying to save my own sorry ass, then I should be doing it. And if I could be doing it, than I would. But I'm not. I can't. And so that just reinforces my certainty of what a worthless bum I am.

As we continue my wake-up process, about 20 minutes after I take them, the amphetamines are probably starting to work, so I'm getting more interested in some of these stories. That's what the speed does for me. It doesn't cure the depression or lift my mood (though I'm still not sure about this), but it gives me relief. It allows me to get involved in other trains of thought, other ideas, trains that aren't tethered to this black hole of self-hatred, helplessness, and despair, so that, for a while at least, I get some relief from my constant state self loathing and contempt. My Happy Paradigm of amphetamines --the state I'm always hoping to recapture--was from when I used to take them when I was younger and spend hours and hours lost in some task--writing, practicing music, solving chemistry problems, cleaning the bathroom, playing with the computer, whatever. Hours spent joyously free of self-consciousness and judgment.

They don't seem to work like that anymore though. They don't have that effect. God knows I've developed a tremendous tolerance to them after 15 years of self-medication. I can take 30, 45 mg of dexedrine now and still lie down and snooze. But they do have an effect. They still bring me some relief, and the morning, when they first kick in, for 20 minutes or half an hour, I actually feel good.

But by now it's time to look at my e-mail, and here's where another strange feature of my depression comes into play: the very idea of looking at my email fills me with fear and dread. Am I going to get some bad news? Is something going to be required of me? Is an old friend going to write and ask me how I am? Invite me to a wedding? Share a memory? Is someone going to write me praising my stories or books?

Any of these things are fraught with deep and dangerous potential. Any of these can send that emotional pendulum careening wildly around in my skull.

But the day is starting now. I'm waking up. If it's a good day, the speed has put me on its back and is carrying my up into involvement with something. If it's a bad day, something has sent my emotional pendulum swinging wildly out of control, like some insane guillotine in my mind, and I'm already in deep emotional pain, at a loss over what to do with myself.

It might be time to go upstairs and get back in bed, try and fall asleep again and hope that the next wake-up will be better, and that maybe then I'll feel like putting on my socks.