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On Severe Depression

(Part I)
I’ve heard it said, ‘write what you know.’ So, at the risk of being a negative nancy[1], I’m going to write about severe depression. The problem with writing about severe depression[2] is that it doesn’t exist.

Severe depression is an absence, not a presence. Severe depression is the absence of desire. Not just the desire that we call desire, the wanting passion, the grasping at the world—nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs; but, also the abstract desire to be, the desire to live. On top of the basic desire to live/be is the desire to live/be in a certain way, the desire to be a good person, both in general and in the specific roles we play – child, friend, lover, employee, boss, parent, etc. What good means is culturally mediated but, ultimately, individually determined.[3]

For much of human history, being good has meant being obedient. And, while this still applies to children as well as certain ethnic subcultures—for the rest of us, being obedient has been eclipsed by being actualized (at least when we’re not at work). Unlike being obedient, which usually comes with specific instructions, being actualized remains maddeningly vague. The best I can figure out is that it has something to do with pushing yourself as hard as possible to cram as many things into your life as possible.[4]

It turns out the opposite of the desire to live is not the desire to die, for that is also a desire, however perverse. The opposite of the desire to live is severe depression. This is not to say that severely depressed people don’t kill themselves, they do, but I believe it is more out of the impulse to escape pain than any desire for the imagined relief and peace of death

Impulses are pretty much the extent of the severely depressed person’s interactions with the world. And even then, these impulses, these actions, are actually a break, a spark in the void of severe depression, driven by panic or some similarly reptilian emotion; as far as possible from the will power of the frontal lobe. I’ve felt that kind of panic. I found it both barely tolerable and blessedly unsustainable, like rage, eventually you run out of steam. Severe depression, like apathy, runs on the lack of steam; it is an absence not a presence.

Thanks to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is easier to destroy than to create. Maybe this is why modern medicine insists on treating depression as a thing, a malignant presence to be vanquished. Or did you not realize that those white coats were suits of armor and all the disease dragons?
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[1]Nobody likes a negative nancy… well, nobody who isn’t dying for somebody to mirror and articulate their pain~

[2]Do not fret, dear reader, I am not severely depressed. This is not a cry for help. If I were severely depressed I would not be able to write this. The fact that I am writing this is a good thing (IMHO~) because it means that not only do I have the effort to spare on writing this, but also that I believe this effort may make a positive difference – for myself if no one else.

[3] See future writing on this as a point of potential personal and collective power.

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