I Just Want to Celebrate
When I was a little girl, my parents would leave me in charge of my two younger sisters. “If they do something bad, you’re the one that’s going to be in trouble.” they said.
Years later, it’s hard to ditch the habit of feeling responsible for the “little ones,” who are both in their thirties. Being a big sister has had a profound influence on every aspect of my life, both personal and professional. I’ve brought the exact brand of tough love and loyalty to the copy editors I’ve mentored on the job, and I’m glad Rod has two sisters. Having sisters has been a positive experience, on the whole.
Last night I found out that the youngest, who is for all intents and purposes my baby, is depressed to the point of suicide. She and I have had many talks about this issue. Our mother has suffered with bouts of clinical depression throughout our lives. So have I. So have all the women in our family.
Last year seemed to be almost entirely subsumed in my own swamping depression, and the climbing out of it. I told my sister last week when I spoke to her that I have little sympathy for people who are depressed and won’t trouble to help themselves, and that is because when I get depressed I use all the resources available to me to lift it.
I know that I’m atypical in this. Most people get so down that they can’t summon the energy to reach out for help.
If I can, I’d like to write about what helps me stay out of the mire. People don’t like reading memoirs about depression unless they are written by famous people. And anyway, what can I say to my sister, or to anyone, that hasn’t been said a million times?
Read Pema Chodron’s _When Things Fall Apart._ Get physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual exercise. Don’t isolate. Listen to music. Participate in ritual that processes whatever grief you can’t let go of. Grief will sicken and kill you unless it is respected and dealt with.
All very easy to say, but not at all simple advice to follow. Look in the mirror. What do you see? We are all predators. Animals that have their eyes placed in the way humans do evolved that way to efficiently catch prey. That predator/prey relationship is in you, in that hideous little voice that tells you you’re shit and don’t deserve to live. You can dial it down, but it never entirely goes away. And we all have it.
So why do some people follow that mocking voice into the abyss, while others are able to ignore it most of the time? For many people, happiness is a muscle that must be strengthened. I know it’s so for me. I have to practice every day saying yes to myself in little ways, and listening to the instincts that are trying to point me into the life that will sustain me, rather than the life I think I ought to have.
I used to be very ambitious for a glittering career. After the last bout of depression, my priorities entirely shifted. Now I just want to be really alive.
What I’ve discovered is that I’m much more animal than I thought. I’ve been so Athena oriented toward arts and culture and civilization that I’ve forgotten the Artemis side of my nature, the one who doesn’t need to be bathed or clothed, fed sumptuously, plied with books. This is the self who is happiest grubbing around making stuff. Meals. Crochet projects. Poems. A solitary animal, elated to be unobserved and free.
I’ve told my sister all this, ad nauseum. It’s so sad that I can’t lead by example. I don’t know what else to do for her.
