Not Depressed, Just Musing

[Trigger Warning: Talk of suicide]

I've been reading some Sylvia Plath poems in between reading her journals (and yes, Sam, I'm reading Brust too). The poems that center around her struggle with depression and mental illness truly resonate within me. I keep thinking "These are the words I would write were I able to write poetry and were greatly more articulate." Not that I could ever be on Plath's level, but I would at least share her sadness and frustration with the lack of control over her own thoughts and emotions.

One of the hardest things to deal with since therapy has been knowing when my brain is off-balance. I've taught myself to recognize the signs, to know whether I'm reacting to something from outside myself or something within my own head. I became something of an expert of examining all my emotions and rooting out their sources so that I never take my anger or sadness out on someone undeserving. I'm not perfect, and sometimes I hurl more abuse on myself, but it's far better than it was ten years ago. However, the one thing I will never ever get used to, or be able to get over is the feeling of not being in control of myself.

Even when heavily medicated, I still had the moments of profound and unexplained sadness, and while I have the ability to work through it most of the time, there are occasionally times in which I have no choice but to let it run its course. It's so hard to explain what it's like, to be sort of outside yourself. These days I'm able to at least tell someone near me what's happening and I explain "I just need a night's rest/A couple of days and I'll be fine again." I repeat that mantra to myself, and it keeps me from completely giving in to the despair, but sometimes I want to wail and scream. It's terrifying to feel it, and there's always the thought at the back of my head "What if this is the time I lose it for good? What if I don't come back?" And it's always there. The memory of the last time I was in a dark place is one I'll carry with me forever. I'll never forget what it was like to want to die, to constantly call myself a coward for being unable to take the pills, to put the knife to my wrist, or the gun to my head. It was always a war within myself. There was the rational side screaming "No, killing yourself isn't the answer," and the Depressed me whispering, "But it would end this pain." No matter how happy I am in life, no matter how good things are, the memories haunt me and the fear of winding up back there never truly abates.

It's funny how just having one chemical in your brain out of balance can destroy the self so completely, even for the shortest amount of time. I'm lucky that so far I've won the struggle with myself, and I'm extremely fortunate that I got the help I did when I did. I'm also fortunate to have friends and a lover who is willing to listen to me, who don't judge me for things beyond my control. Not everyone is so lucky as me, and reading Plath's words and knowing how her life ended, I can see clearly the path I could have taken. Though I never made an honest attempt to take my own life, I know Plath's story as intimately as my own if nothing else than because she understood. Even her darkest poems, the ones that speak frankly of suicide and the darkness in one's own head, comfort me. They comfort me not because I enjoy reliving those moments, but because I know I am not alone. I know that someone else lived through the pain, someone else wrote about it, and if there's one other person, then there must be more like me. There have to be more who understand.

I think I'll end this by sharing the poem that inspired this entry. It can be found here along with many others of Plath's poems as well as many, many other poets.

"Elm"
Sylvia Plath

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root;
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it.
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallup thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, the big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand,a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches?—

Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.