The Parasite

This is an entry about depression. It’s too long and too dark and you spend too much time reading blogs. You need to shut your computer off right now and go read a good book.

Parasite Mine

Dick Cavett of all people has a blog in The New York Times online. I've read three of his posts: The first was his take on Bobby Fischer, the famous and famously neurotic chess player; the second was a post about Cavett’s experiences with depression; the third and most recent was a follow up to the post on depression.

Like Cavett, I also suffer from depression.

If an alien came to earth and asked me about depression, asked me what it was and what it did to me, I might say that depression is a kind of parasite. This is one definition of parasite: "an organism that lives in or on another organism (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the host's expense." The parasite I have infected my brain more than two decades ago. It eats all the happiness as it comes in and the only thing that gets past it and into my brain is unhappiness. A brain fed a steady diet of unhappiness for long enough begins to distrust happiness. It’s not that happiness feels too good or that I don’t feel that I deserve it, it’s just that it feels wrong. If some happiness gets through, it doesn’t even matter. After decades of only getting to processing unhappiness, my brain doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of happiness anymore. When I am depressed--and, often when I am not depressed--trying to recognize happiness is like trying, when you’re hungry, to eat a great smelling candle.

What would the alien think about that answer, I wonder. Would she ask the obvious follow-up questions: If depression is a parasite, can you extract it? Can you kill it?

No, I don’t believe it can be extracted. It’s hyphae extend into every part of my brain, into every part of my existence. It warps my vision and hearing and appetite. It affects every interaction I have in this world. It can’t be killed unless one considers the obvious solution of offing its host. It lives for decades. It wipes out memory so that you can’t remember a time before it. It wipes out hope so that you can’t think of a time past it. It erodes your ability to recognize joy. It’s not that you’re followed around by a dark cloud, it’s that you become that dark cloud.

Would the alien then say, That sounds horrible. How many people are infected with this parasite?

I would have to answer that I don’t know. If you have it, you’re not allowed to talk about it to other people, even if they also have it.

One of the reasons you can’t talk about it is because you’re afraid that people will see that you’re parasite-ridden, diseased, and then no one will want to touch you or get near you. You have to hide it because, of course you don’t want to infect other people, but it’s difficult and lonely to be so isolated, so you fake happiness so that others will want to be near you. It scares people when you talk to them about it, as it should. No one wants to look into its dark, vast maw. No one in their right mind would want to reach a hand into the dark unknown to try to pull you out. They stand at the edge and shout advice to you: Buck up! Try to get some exercise! Look at how good you have it!

I do try to pay attention to that advice, if only so I know how I should act to make people feel comfortable around me. I try to fake it ‘til I make it and end up doing nothing but faking it all the time. Faking it is hard work and it takes a lot of energy to act convincingly. But the parasite also takes a lot of energy. Between the parasite’s needs and the need to fake it, I end up almost transparent with exhaustion. Getting out of bed, or even the thought of getting out of bed, becomes overwhelming. Brushing my teeth is something I know I should do and often can’t manage. Going to the gym seems like a Herculean task, and I am not a hero.

If I do talk about it, no one who isn’t infected understands. Sometimes they say they were depressed once but they got over it. (They mean they were sad.) They say that they get depressed, but it only lasted for a day or two. (They mean that they were sad.) Sadness is not depression. If you can feel sad, then you are not depressed. If you feel like someday it will lift, then you are not depressed. If you can find joy in anything, if you can respond to music, say, or art or a Hallmark greeting card, then you are not depressed. Depression is a constant din of numbness, hopelessness, exhaustion.


Here are a few details that maybe I would and maybe I wouldn’t share with the alien who wanted to know about depression:

As I spiral into depression, I watch helplessly as my memory recedes. I can’t remember...anything. I get lost in the middle of conversations and I certainly can’t remember the details of a conversation I had the day before or even a few minutes before. I can’t remember, ever, a time when I was happy. That sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? But its true. When I’m depressed,I can laugh and evoke laughter in others. But here’s my secret: It’s only a parlor trick, a patzer’s gambit. Even when there is genuine happiness surrounding laughter, the parasite takes it long before I can have a share. I have learned to fake happy, to look happy, and I think--in fact I know--it looks normal to other people. I know this because often people are happy to see me and remark on how funny I am or how entertaining I am. I can make people laugh. I can entertain them. What I can never do is say, “I’m sinking.” What I can never do is say, “I’m sunk.”

When I am depressed, I go on autopilot. I agree to things without understanding what it is I’m agreeing to. I find myself at the losing end of arguments with friends when I’ve agreed to do something and don’t and don’t remember agreeing to anything or even having the discussion. I end up looking stupid or like a liar. It’s all a byproduct of getting caught up in “fake it ‘til you make it.” When I’m faking it, all my life is a kind of lie, and it’s hard enough to keep track of the truth some days.

When I am depressed, I think that someone must have stuffed my head with cotton because otherwise how could I be having so much trouble thinking?

People suggest finding a distraction, which is useless because the parasite makes it seem as though there is nothing to be distracted from. There is nothing to be distracted to.

Music can’t get through. I can’t read because I can’t hang onto words long enough to make it to the end of a sentence. I can’t watch television because I can’t look at the eyes of the people on television. When I do, I can see that they’re lying and it makes me anxious and anxiety is too close to insanity.

When I am depressed, I think constantly about suicide and its inevitability. I am grateful for what I have, but the only way I can think of to repay those to whom I’m grateful, is by ceasing to be a burden on them. The final solution seems obvious. On bad days, I go to bed thinking about suicide and I wake up, too early, thinking about suicide. I know the day is going to be really bad when I fixate on a fantasy I have in which I snip off my own fingers with garden shears. I think about using my right hand to cut the fingers off my left hand and I wonder how many fingers I could manage to cut off before I felt anything at all and whether the pain would cut through the numbness. I wonder what keeps me from doing it and I know that the answer to that question is that the depression is both causing the desire and preventing me from acting on it.

When I can feel, even when the feeling is just a kind of endless sadness, when I can cry, I know I’m coming out of it. The parasite is going into a dormant state. When I’m not depressed, I live in fear of its return. When I’m not depressed, I still don’t know what it means to be happy. The parasite stops feeding for a time, but it’s hyphae still wend through my brain, remember, telling me that happiness is not for me. Even when I’m not depressed, I think of suicide as an inevitable outcome.

I spent years in therapy, working and hoping. Most of the therapists I met were useless. One therapist wasn’t. She helped--it took about five years--and when I left therapy, I thought I was cured. When I began to spiral down into darkness again, I felt helpless and afraid. Years later, years ago, another therapist asked me what I was going to do that day. I didn’t have to do anything that day and said so. I wondered what it was that made people get up and go to museums or movies or have hobbies without having to, without being forced to. To me, one does those things because one has to act normal because someone else is watching. When one is alone, there is no need to do things like that. I asked her why people do things like that and she said, “To feed your heart.” I wondered what she meant. Oh, I’m not stupid. I know what she meant, I just didn’t know what good her saying that was supposed to do me. The heart doesn't feel anything anyway. Why would you feed it? It’s not going to get better. If you feed it, you’re just prolonging the inevitable.

That’s what the parasite says.

When I’m depressed, I have a variation on panic attacks. I’ve never been diagnosed with this (unlike the depression, which is psychiatrist certified). They’re not really panic attacks, they’re more of a constant din of fear and anxiety that sometimes gets cranked up so that I can’t hear anything but fear and anxiety. Even though I embrace suicide as inevitable, I suddenly find myself afraid to die in a car accident or from an anaphylactic response to something I’m allergic to. I find myself unable to drive or to eat certain foods or even to touch certain things because I’m convinced that I will bring about my own death. I want desperately to be alone but worry constantly about my own safety and about the effects of that isolation. That’s what it’s like to live on the parasite’s leftovers.

I used lie in bed in the morning, unable to get up until I had worked out how long it was going to be until I was able to get back into bed. If I had two classes that day, I would think about the time of the classes and the prep and commute time and then come up with an answer like, “I can be back in bed in five hours.” If I didn’t shower or change out of my pajamas, I could aim for four and a half hours. Many days I didn’t shower and I wore my pajamas to school or to work. (I worked in a lab. No one cared what I wore.) Every day was like that, day in and day out.