Schope77

[schope77]

down in it

Yeah, it’s true. Or, at least, it’s what I believe to be true. You see, I also believe that the medications I have been prescribed are masking the true depth of my melancholia, but my body betrays such deception. I am depressed. My body tells me so, even if my mind is convinced otherwise. I can tell, because I simply cannot do anything. Because I have done almost nothing in the last 21 months. Almost two whole years of degradation. I wonder how far I’ve actually fallen. And re-emerging into the world is not something I want to do. I don’t even know if I can. It’s terrifying. I feel like it’s my last chance, and that if this re-emergence fails, then things will be really really bad.

A friend was admonishing me not long ago, while I was in a dark hole. She was trying to encourage me by directing me to think on the past, of what kind of person I was. All the good I did. All the people I helped. All the places I traveled, all the accomplishments I . . . accomplished. Yes, there were some good times, in the past. Years ago.

The past reminds me of where I am. It’s far from where I was. ‘Think of me in my better moments’ does little to comfort the mess I’ve become. Reminiscing leads to rumination. Rumination leads to dark holes.

I need to wake up. I need to get out of this. It’s just too exhausting. It’s too . . . whole. It’s everywhere. I used to be somebody, but it feels like that person was somebody else. Who am I now? More importantly(?), can I find my else again. And if I can, will it accept me?

And does any of this actually matter.

[schope77]

anxiety

I'll never forget this moment. Last Fall, immediately following a very traumatic event. I'll never forget the feelings of terror, helplessness, and hopelessness that flooded my entire being as waves of anxiety washed over me. I remember thinking, 'please, don't be back,' but it was. And it was eager to make up for lost time.

The last year has been a special kind of hell. In one sense I am extremely proud of how I managed to get through my MA program in Toronto. In another sense, my life has been a ceaseless horror. I feel like almost every important decision I've made in the last year has been such a huge mistake. Every major part of my current life, I don't want it. I feel lost, empty, defeated.

Anxiety continues to feast on me. It feels like a living thing, gnawing on my insides. It's palpable. I don't know what I'm trying to say. I'd say I'm losing hope, but I didn't have much of it to begin with. 

Anxiety is pretty awful. In my current case, it just always feels like something is constricting and twisting my heart and/or my insides. My heart and lungs and guts feel physically assaulted. When the anxiety recedes, my stomach is literally sore from the stress that it is trying to deal with. I've never dealt with anxiety like this in this form.

I’m back on medication, and it has seriously helped. But it’s the oddest thing. It feels like my body is a house and anxiety is an intruder with very bad intentions. The medications are like a gate, constructed around my house (body) to keep the intruder (anxiety) out. This is mildly comforting. But, the intruder is literally trying to smash the gate down. That’s what it feels like. The anxiety is being kept at a distance, but it is unhappy, violently unhappy, and it wants back in, and it seems determined. I can feel it, so desperate to own me. Anxiety is hellish. For me, it’s not as bad as depression, but it’s bad bad bad. And it’s scary. No one can understand who has not suffered it. And it’s impossible to accurately describe it to an outsider.

Anxiety steals your life away.

[schope77]

The philosophers . . . always have this dilemma in their mouths to console us for our mortal condition: 'The soul is either mortal or immortal. If mortal, it will be without pain; if immortal, it will go on improving.' They never touch the other branch: 'What if it goes on getting worse?'

Montaigne

[schope77]

artificial “sanity”

So, I am currently preparing to do a presentation on the great Italian poet and pessimist, Giacomo Leopardi. In the course of my research, I found this rather thought-provoking statement by a retired US diplomat who served in Italy. This diplomat (Luciano Mangiafico, by name) wrote: “Someone like Leopardi, putting forward such bleak views nowadays, would be diagnosed as mentally unbalanced and prescribed psychiatric drugs.” 

Now, if you are unaware, Leopardi was one of the greatest thinkers and writers in our species’ history. He was a genius. But, he suffered from severe mental illness. This leads me back to the quote above. Had Leopardi been diagnosed with depression, or whatnot, and prescribed medication to mitigate his symptoms, would we have gotten the same thought out of him?

NO.

I don’t believe so. And this leads me to a more practical application. I consider myself to be of modest intelligence; I also consider myself to suffer from mental illness. Unlike Leopardi, I am currently on medication to help deal with the symptoms of my condition. I wonder how much this medication really affects the impact of my thought. And while the thought of going off my medication is rather terrifying, I am tempted to do just that, and to chronicle my descent back into depression; to experiment a bit with the impact of depression on what I imagine as impactful thought. It’s a tough call. It would be stupid to do, but, in the same breath, it may be the only authentic way I can really be me. This is rather scary. Who am I, apart from my depressive tendencies? An interesting question. One I am struggling with whether I really want to know or not.

[schope77]

An optimist tells me to open my eyes and look at the world and see how beautiful it is in the sunshine, with its mountains, valleys, rivers, plants, animals, and so on. But is the world, then, a peepshow? These things are certainly beautiful to behold, but to be them is something quite different.

Arthur Schopenhauer [The World as Will and Representation, vol. 2]

[schope77]

Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.

Giacomo Leopardi

[schope77]

Schopenhauer refused to admit that a being more intelligent than man could exist either here or on any other planet, for with enlarged intelligence he would consider life too deplorable to be supported for a single moment.

Edgar Saltus [The Philosophy of Disenchantment & The Anatomy of Negation]

[schope77]

Out n about #cntower #rogerscentre #toronto (at Downtown Toronto)

[blackestdespondency]

The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn’t thought about it.”

Sylvia Plath (via blackestdespondency)

[schope77]

“I read a theory once that the human intellect was like peacock feathers. Just an extravagant display intended to attract a mate. All of art, literature, a bit of Mozart, William Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and the Empire State Building just an elaborate mating ritual. Maybe it doesn’t matter that we have accomplished so much for the basest of reasons. But, of course, the peacock can barely fly. It lives in the dirt, peeking insects out of the muck, consoling itself with its great beauty. I have come to think of so much of consciousness as a burden, a weight, and we have spared them that. Anxiety, self-loathing, guilt. The hosts are the ones who are free. Free here under my control.

Dr. Robert Ford [Westworld]

[schope77]

It seems to be one of those days. A day where I just have so so much work to accomplish, yet my mind is working against myself.

[schope77]

Causational Depression or Distraction

I don’t know if who I am now is real.

I was out for lunch with a friend a few days ago, and I was telling her about my issues. She asked a very important question for me right now. She asked if my current bout of depression/anxiety was simply causal. Or, if my recent bout with depression/anxiety was solely a result of my wife leaving me. It certainly could be; I mean, it is much better than the alternative. It simply may be the case that my current ‘existential attitude’ is completely a result of that event. Since that event, I have been completely racked with thoughts of worthlessness and hopelessness; I have lost about 15 pounds, my concentration is all but gone, and on and on and on. Maybe, after a certain amount of time has passed, I will go back to being the happily-contented pessimist I have been for so very long.

But another, far more troubling, option also presents itself, and that is that my marriage was simply nothing more than a distraction from depression. Maybe depression was always waiting for an opportunity for me to take her back. It could be that the crippling depression I had during my teens and early 20′s was simply alleviated by outside circumstances. Maybe depression is the one constant in my life, always waiting behind the scenes, patiently waiting for me to come back to her. This is rather unsettling. This would imply that no matter what happens to me, no matter how good/distracting, suffering is just one single circumstance away from consuming me.

This latter thought doesn’t sit well with me. Not because I don’t think it’s true, but because it sucks. Depression sucks. But that may be simply who I am, whoever that is.

[hollow-planet]

Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.

William Faulkner (1897-1962)

[schope77]

the bitterest of all sufferings, that of dissatisfaction with ourselves

Arthur Schopenhauer

[schope77]

there is more to frighten than to oppress us, and we suffer more frequently from ideas than from reality

Seneca. Epistles

[blackestdespondency]

I swear to you, gentlemen, that to be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (via blackestdespondency)

[schope77]

we are all innocent in the beginning, which just means that neither we nor anyone else recognizes the evil of our own natures: the evil arises only with motives, and we only come to recognize the motives in time. Ultimately, we come to recognize ourselves as quite different from what we imagined ourselves to be . . . and we are often frightened by ourselves.

Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation vol.1 §55