Reaching Out

Further thoughts from depression's border.

A White-crowned Sparrow, proclaiming. (Photo by Sara.)

My father, Paul, used to say, repeatedly, that the thing that most amazed him was the capacity of some children who were unloved to somehow grow up into loving adults. He certainly fit into that category himself.

I remember, from my childhood, when our friend Martha came back from traveling overseas with her son Lewis (I’ve changed their names), and Lewis had apparently picked up a kind of sleeping sickness. He wasn’t asleep, exactly, but the ebullient boy we’d known was now kind of a zombie: walking around seemingly dazed, with little affect. This terrified me, and I found myself worrying (with no basis in fact) that if I got too close to him, I might catch it myself. One day, after their trip, Martha and Lewis came to visit us. My dad and I met them in the lobby of our building. As I hung back, fearfully, Dad strode over to Lewis and wrapped him up in a big bear hug. I wasn’t sure whether Lewis was aware of what was happening, but Martha was. And I was. In that moment I had at least two simultaneous thoughts: (1) Dad might catch that disease, and then might even spread it to the rest of us; and (2) loving other human beings unconditionally is our purpose on Earth.

I have spent much of my life trying to shake the idea that I am a poor copy of my father. Which has made the past six years or so especially tricky for me, as I’ve continued to live past the age he died at, 59. As I lay in bed this morning, after (again) sleeping for too long, trying to find the motivation to get up and get going, this thought came into my head: I don’t know how Dad would have handled being my age (65). If I am to go on (and I intend to), then I need to invent who I am at this age; I’m on my own.

Though of course I’m not totally on my own. I have my beautiful family and extraordinary friends, who keep letting me know that I am loved. And when I get to write to you, and when I have the occasion to perform for audiences, I can feel myself reflected back. And this tells me, I exist. And the I who exists is no longer a copy; the Xerox has outlived the original image.

It strikes me now that telling stories about myself — and my father, and others — which I began to do after he died, was, at least in part, an attempt to ascertain if I was still here: if I still had substance, and even a soul, when the man who had made me could no longer animate me.

I still had my mother, Bunny. And yes, she did make me too. But she was desperate for the world to give her the love, the adoration, that she hadn’t received from her mother, my Grandma Dora. And in that desperation, there was almost no room for me. She needed me to shower her with love, though it seemed that no amount of my love (or anyone’s) could ease her pain. And in the long decades after Dad’s death, as Mom lived to 95, she and I danced a strange, wary dance, in which each longed for the other’s love while each resented the other’s perceived withholding of that love. And then I got older, and she got even older than that, and eventually it was just the two of us — an aging man and his old mother — in a room on a skilled-nursing floor, and she was dying and I was by her bedside, and Alzheimer’s had burned away her desperation to be loved, and as a result she could now feel my love, and I could feel hers, and there was no more dance, just the embrace.

She died last March, over a year ago, and I’m just coming to realize the desolation I feel in her absence. Which is ironic — or something — as I wished for so long that she weren’t my mother, that some other woman was, someone who was warm and caring. And perhaps I resisted the knowledge that I was, in part, a copy of her as well as of my dad. That those two aspects — the hugger and the fervent wisher for adoration — were both parts of me.

I remember reading in, I think, Oliver Sacks’s Awakenings that patients who were seemingly frozen for years and years were, rather, in a constant tension between opposing internal forces. And I wonder whether, in some way, this ongoing depression — which makes me feel so damn empty, so slack — is in fact a taut battle between aspects of myself. I am blessed with so much love, and I feel so much love, and yet I find myself engaged in some sort of a protest against existing, against acting.

It’s happening in waves, this mood thing. A day or two of relative normalcy, followed by a couple of days of stubborn oblivion. When I’m on the upswing, I interrogate myself. I ask: Am I me again? The first few up periods, I allowed myself to at least hope that the depression was over; currently, I’m taking a wait-and-see approach.

In my fervent hope that I will emerge from this whole experience with a bit more self-knowledge, I keep striving for new insights into who I usually am. As someone who lapses into a deep depression every decade or two, am I a walking mood time-bomb? Are there conflicting internal forces that, if identified and understood, might be nudged into some sort of truce?

On the other hand, my non-depressed life feels so blessed — is so blessed — that I wonder why I keep angling for more signs of spiritual sickness within myself. Being depressed: bad. Not being depressed: good. Simple, right? But no, not for me. In fact, simple: bad. (Maybe.) (No, actually, that’s dumb — possibly even dangerous.) (* sigh *)

I do know this: Reaching out is way better than pulling away. Risking a hug beats hanging back. Even when you end up getting hurt. Because, well, you might get hurt either way. But the pain of love’s self-exposure is worth it, I believe; whereas the pain of withholding love is a black hole, an ever-tightening singularity of suffering. My mother had to forget in order to feel loved. My father loved deeply, and I have spent years and years trying to make sure he isn’t forgotten. As I keep writing to you, I hope to remember all the connections that have given my life meaning. Not just to remember, but to feel them. Not just to feel them, but to express, somehow, my infinite, bewildered gratitude.