Understanding My Sudden Depression

I never really understood depression, I guess because I never experienced it - until I was fifty-seven. It happened this way:

Two days after my "visit" to the emergency ward I met with a urologist. He told me several things besides bladder cancer can cause blood in the urine, including a bladder infection. He gave me a prescription for antibiotics and scheduled an appointment with me so he could look into my bladder-something I dreaded.

I asked, "Can't we do the appointment sooner? I don't like having to wait almost a week."

"I'm sorry, but I just can't."

The next day I had a body scan with contrast. A few days later Dr. Sherman called. He said the results were encouraging, but he wanted me to take a PET scan.

I asked, "If the results are so encouraging why should I take a PET scan?"

"Just so we're sure about the spots on your lung."

Dr. Sherman, it seemed, wasn't being honest with me. I understood he didn't want to scare me, but my having cancer was a real possibility and, well, I just didn't like the idea of doctors thinking they could fool me into believing I had nothing to worry about.

Did they think I hadn't heard of WebMD.com?

I got a phone call from an old co-worker, Dan. Dan and I had never been close friends. To be honest, I had trouble with his radical politics, and with his bitterness. Dan was a failed artist, and I guess I was scared of becoming one too. Still, there was a bond between us: the Twelve Steps. Dan was a recovering alcoholic, though I suspected he occasionally fell off the wagon. (He often called in sick.)

"Randy, I ran into one of the guys you worked with. He told me you left Frank."

"Yeah, I had a run-in with his alcoholic son about a year ago. When Frank got back from California he took my side of the argument. This infuriated Frank Jr. For the next year he was always on my case, always putting me down. Then last week he told me his father was semi-retired, and that, since he was now in charge, it was my job to drive cars with one headlight out. I told him I couldn't do that, so he told me to leave. Dan, at this point in my life I just can't work for an active alcoholic. Sometimes I just hate them, though I know I shouldn't."

"I hear you."

"I have more news." I filled Dan in on my medical condition.

"I'm really sorry to hear that. It sounds like you're doing all the right things to take care of yourself. I hope everything turns out okay. I knew someone who was diagnosed with advanced bladder cancer fifteen years ago. They built him a new bladder. He's doing fine."

"That's the one thing I'm grateful for: Bladder cancer, as long as it hasn't spread, is treatable."

I remembered that, for an alcoholic, Dan was an exception: He listened.

"I have medical news too," Dan said. "Ever since my hernia operation I've been having some trouble, so I have to go back and have a second procedure. It's nothing major. I won't even have to say overnight in the hospital."

"When are you going in?"

"In a week."

Though I was concerned for Dan, I was envious. I wished I had his medical condition rather than mine.

We agreed to stay in touch. I hung up feeling glad that, in spite of our political differences, Dan and I had found a way to be friendly.

Finally: the morning of my bladder exam. I didn't feel very scared, probably because I was still in denial, the way I had been in denial about so many things: my fear, my vulnerability, and my lack of self-worth.

To fast forward ahead: my bladder exam was negative. I didn't have bladder cancer. One more scan to go.

Also negative. I didn't have lung or any other type of cancer. Relieved, I was sure I'd feel great and finally leave my resentments and regrets behind

I didn't. In fact, I felt a little worse. I wasn't sure why. At first I assumed it was because I again felt like a victim, this time because I had to start all over again at a new limo company, just because the boss's son was a drunk.

Again the world seemed so unfair!

But I did start again and found myself surrounded with unfamiliar faces. I felt lonely, like an outsider who didn't belong.

Baron, a guy I used to work with, called me. "I have bad news," he said. "Dan didn't make it."

"Didn't make it?"

"Yeah, he died of a heart attack on the table."

"What? He was only sixty-two."

"I know."

"How'd you find out?"

"Dan gave the hospital my name and number. I guess he had no one else."

Still not believing that Dan had died, I thought of how strange it was that just a week ago I possibly had cancer while Dan had a minor medical condition, and yet Dan passed away, and I was fine.

I thanked Baron for calling. I thought of how Dan died a lonely, failed, bitter artist. More than anything I wished I could rewrite his story, but I knew I couldn't.

Within a few hours I sank into a quicksand of grief. Surprised at how deep and thick the quicksand was, I wondered, is all my grief over Dan?

Soon I realized much of it was over my cancer-ridden parents' horrible deaths. Again I wanted to go back in time and make peace with them before they fell sick; and again I didn't want to face grief, so I wished I could deny it, the way I had denied the grief of my childhood, but then I told myself that feeling grief was a good thing-a sign of my now being strong enough to come to terms with it.

I assumed, therefore, my grief would run its course and retreat, but like a river fed by tributaries, my grief grew stronger and deeper; and so I sensed Dan's and my parents' passing weren't the only source of my grief.

But else what was? Searching for an answer I lay down, closed my eyes and meditated. Soon I came to see that much of the source was my fear of also dying as a lonely, failed, bitter artist.

I looked forward to my monthly therapy session.

It arrived, finally. I told Matt I got a clean bill of health.

"That's great news."

I told Matt about Dan, and then spoke about my recent disappointments: failing the eye exam, seeing my book sales go nowhere and again changing jobs because of an alcoholic or drug-addict boss.

"And what does all that mean?" Matt asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Do you feel you caused all those disappointments?"

"No, that's what makes them even more painful."

"You do have good news: You're healthy. Why not focus on that?"

"My feelings are not a telescope. I just can't adjust them."

"Do you think it's in any way connected to your tendency to focus on the negative?"

Annoyed by the question, I answered, "I suppose so." I went on and told Matt how tired I was of being a chauffeur, of having to fight New York City traffic, of having to sit in a car by myself hour after hour, of having to work for owners who never listened to me. "Chauffeuring was tolerable when I was pursuing a writing career, but where has that career led me: to a dead end walled with debt. Becoming a writer once seemed like a dream. Now it seems like a curse. I don't understand how, after my book got some great reviews, the reviews have just stopped. "

"Do you feel you have options?" Matt asked.

"Not unless I buy them in the stock market."

"You once talked about moving out West and driving a school bus."

"Do you think that's a real possibility?"

"You once thought it was."

"I feel like this conversation is going in circles." I looked at the small clock on the desk. The session was almost over. I can't wait to get out of here.

Matt ended the session by again reminding me that I had a tendency to focus on the negative rather than the positive.

Easy for him to say, I thought.

A half-hour later I walked into my apartment, and suddenly my grief and disappointment spun like a black hole and pulled me into a pitch-black depression. Again and again I thought-I obsessed-of how nothing ever seemed to work out for me. I assumed, therefore, nothing ever would. I felt cursed, and was sure no one would ever publish my book of fly fishing memoirs. I was also sure that, at fifty-five, I didn't have any possibility of finding a rewarding career. I dreaded, as if it were the plague, the possibility that I'd have to drive a limousine for the next ten years. I wondered what the purpose of living was. I again read Hamlet's To Be Or Not To Be soliloquy. His words hit like George Foreman's punches. To me, living in misery seemed like a coward's way out. I didn't see how I'd be able to go to work the next day, or the next.

I reminded myself to stay in the day, but I couldn't, so I tried to stay in the hour. I couldn't. I tried to stay in the moment.

The moments moved like a river of molasses.

Somehow I made it through the next day of work, though my pain deepened. Finally home, I thought, for the first time in my life, of the best way of ending it all. The thought of jumping off a building and mutilating my body didn't sit well with me, so I turned to the thought of taking an overdose of sleeping pills. And if I could get the pills, how would I say goodbye? Easy: I'd write letters to my friends and my sister, explaining why I decided not to go on living. Yes, my decision would cause them, especially my sister, pain, but maybe, just maybe, they would find a way to understand.

I made it through another day of work, and another, and then I thought of how Dan's death had started a chain reaction of dark feelings. I wondered, How, with all my recovery, did I fall into my first severe depression? Was all my recovery, therefore, a waste of time? If only I could time travel back, to before I was in recovery, then I could again repress and deny my pain.

But like a flowing river, I couldn't go back.

I thought of my sister, of how she had suffered from depression and had tried, several times, to commit suicide. I thought of how I never understood the pain she, and others, had lived with before modern-day antidepressants-and not just for a few weeks but for many, many years. I thought of how, for the first time in my life, I experienced the suffocating grip of depression, and of how I now understood its crushing pain.

No wonder, I thought, my sister and Robert and the bosses I've worked for, became alcoholics and drug addicts. Should I take antidepressants? But they won't change that I'm at a dead end in my life. And what about all those people who don't have writing or dreams and have to work dead-end jobs, many to support families. How do they do it without being depressed? Suddenly I feel so sorry for them. Yes, I had been blessed to have a dream, even though I didn't always see it.

Finally my work week ended. I spent my days off lying on my couch, watching movies and TV and trying, somewhat successfully, to numb my pain. I went to a Twelve Step meeting. Terribly ashamed of my great depression, I didn't share about it.

I had to go back to work.

Like an angler wading upstream against a strong current, I made it through another work week, one step, one moment at a time.

I stood on 57th street, waiting for a bus. I remembered often sharing my feelings of disappointment with Matt. I remembered him always asking me questions, him inferring that my feelings were somehow not valid, and therefore my fault.

I got on the bus. The thought hit me: During all my years of therapy, all my years of disappointment, Matt had never shown me the slightest bit of empathy.

Immediately, my depression eased its deadly grip.

A half hour later I walked into my apartment and meditated. Yes, I thought, my depression, my thoughts of suicide, my lack of self-worth, must be connected to my not receiving empathy. Yes, during my whole life I've probably denied how much I craved empathy; but now, because of my recovery and my recent cancer scare, I'm able, finally, to admit my craving. Has the final layer of my recovery been peeled? Am I now ready to have all my character defects lifted? Yes, I should be grateful. When the other layers were peeled, I also felt pain. And my mother-yes, she too was in so much pain because her parents spent so much empathy on their dying son they had none left for her. No wonder she raged. And my father: his parents were so self-involved they had little empathy for him. No wonder he denied his feelings. If only I had seen this sooner. But I'm not supposed to regret the past. I have to go forward, like a river. Yes, my cancer scare has changed me, though not in the way I expected. It has helped me understand the pain of others and has helped me become more empathetic. Maybe the blood in my urine happened for a reason, like the time my fly line broke and I had to change lines and ended up catching a fish. And maybe, just maybe, a loving Higher Power is helping me take my recovery to a deeper level. Yet still I'm so scared to believe in a loving, active Higher Power. Is it because I'm afraid of being hurt again? Am I that vulnerable? No! I can choose to see myself as someone who's been through so much, and has always kept getting up, always kept using my pain to help me grow. Yes, my recovery, if I work it, will help me find a way.

I woke up the next morning and ate breakfast. My depression, it seemed, had lifted.

I went to a Twelve Step meeting and shared about my recent depression and how it had changed me. After the meeting several people came up to me and told me how helpful my share was. She thanked me, then again.

Grateful, I thought, Yes, I can still help others. Perhaps I still have important writing to do, important amends to make. True, I don't see the solutions for my life right now, but in the past, like after my mother died, I also didn't see solutions, and yet solutions revealed themselves, not in my time but in theirs, and always, I now see, for the better. Who knows, maybe my book will start to sell, and I'll sell my new book, especially because, after all I've been through, I now see the way my memoirs and autobiographical stories are unified. And with all those notes I've taken during last fishing season, I can write a new memoir, and though I see only the first half of my story, with spring almost here, perhaps my new adventures will lead me on a path that will show me how my new memoir will end

Randy is a native New Yorker. His writing has appeared in many publications, including The Flyfisher, Flyfishing & Tying Journal and Fishing And Hunting News. He is also the author of the historical fly-fishing and fly-casting novel, The Fly Caster Who Tried To Make Peace With the World, now an ebook.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/4786

Much of Randy's writing is about the techniques of spin and fly casting and about the spirituality/recovery of fly fishing. He often fishes the streams of Westchester, the piers of New York City and the lakes of Central Park.

Visit his website at: http://www.flyandspincasting.com

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