Funeral in my Brain, Emortal Depression Susceptibility

Funeral in my Brain, Emortal Depression Susceptibility

 

Funeral in my Brain, by Emily Dickenson

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading - treading - till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through -

 

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum -

Kept beating - beating - till I thought

My mind was going numb -

 

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space - began to toll,

 

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race,

Wrecked, solitary, here -

 

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down -

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing - then -

 

 

Emortals, the extremely long lived, with centuries of life, are particularly susceptible to depression, perhaps because they merely have more opportunities to have triggering episodes, or the accumulation of regret, grief, loss, dissonance, and so forth.

Depression is not about mere sadness and grief, although those can trigger depression.

Sometimes without notice or identifiable triggers, they find themselves losing interest in almost everything. Not want to do any of the things they previously wanted to do, and not know why.

Vitality seeps away. Everything becomes too much effort. Even simple things like lunch becomes an unbearable effort to imagine, decide on the food, order someone to prepare and serve it, even the effort to chew it and swallow feels like a chore and sometimes an ordeal.

The emortal knows that it's ridiculous, even while they're experiencing it. Emortals know that people manage to eat lunch and organize themselves to bathe, groom and dress, and perhaps even leave the house and that it's not a big deal, and yet nonetheless in its grip and unable to figure out any way around it. They begin to feel themselves doing less and thinking less and feeling less, a kind of nullity.

Soon, anxiety set in. Feeling all the time like that feeling you have if you're walking and you slip or trip and the ground is rushing up at you, but instead of lasting half a second, the way that does, the feeling lasts for months. A sensation of having the symptoms of being afraid all the time but without identifiable cause. At a certain point it is just too painful to be alive, only the effort to kill oneself requires more effort than ordering lunch.

One day, the emortal wakes up in bed completely frozen, thinking how something is wrong and should call for help, but can’t muster the effort to activate comms. After many hours of lying and staring, the comms rang of its own accord and someone realizes something is wrong on your behalf.

Of course, doctors are consulted, tests are made, evaluations, followed by the inevitable medications and therapy.

The emortal wonders if the medication making them more fully themselves, or is it making them into someone else.

Most Imperial emortals, objectively have a high quality life, a life worth living.

They wonder if it is a chemical problem, a psychological problem, a philosophical problem or even a spiritual or religious problem.

People think of depression as being just sadness. It's much, much too much sadness, much too much grief at far too slight a cause.

If you have a loss and you feel incredibly terrible, and then months later, you are still deeply sad, but you're functioning a little better, it's probably grief, and it will probably ultimately resolve itself in some measure.

If you experience a catastrophic loss, and you feel incredibly terrible, and six months later you can barely function at all, then it's probably a depression that was triggered by the catastrophic circumstances.

There are people who on the surface, seem to have what sounded like relatively mild depression who are nonetheless utterly disabled by it. There are other people who have what sounds like terribly severe depression who nonetheless had good lives in the interstices between their depressive episodes.

Depression feels like a slower way of being dead, that slow way of being dead can lead to actual deadness. It's a major disability, whether we like to admit it or not, people die of it every day.

An emotal can slip into a more or less catatonic, essentially without moving, day after day after day, singing the same hymn over and over and over in their mind just to occupy their thoughts. Singing inside the mind to blot out the things the mind was saying otherwise like, 'You are nothing. You are nobody. You don't even deserve to live.'

Depression is not some grim gray veil that you see the world through the haze of a bad mood. The emortal feels quite confident that the obscuring veil has been taken away that they are now seeing the universe truly. Emortal depressives, especially with their vast stores of experience know what they are seeing is the truth.

"No matter what we do, we're all just going to die in the end."

"There can be no true communion between two human beings. Each of us is trapped in his own body."

"Everything is so pointless."

"Life has no meaning or purpose."

It is hard to get them to focus right now on what to have for breakfast.

Emortals are often convinced what they are expressing is not illness, but insight. Most people know about all those same existential questions and are not distracted by it, at some point many emortals can’t stop thinking of them.

Depression is exhausting, it takes up so much of your time and energy. Silence about depression make it worse.

Depression is broadly perceived to be a modern upper and middle-class malady, some consider it a genetic vulnerability evenly distributed in the population and triggering circumstances. I subscribe to the theory that it is built into all sapient being capable of love. Depression is something braided so deeply in us all, that there was no separating it from our character and personality. For example, depression is part of love. There's no such thing as real love without the anticipation of loss and that spectre of despair that comes with it. If you were married to someone and thought, "If my spouse dies, I'll just find another one," then it probably is not actually love.

There is distaste many people still have for the idea of treatment, the notion that treatment is somehow exploitative, changing the person. There is the false moral imperative that treatment of depression, the medications and so on, are an artifice, and that it's not natural. It is natural for people's teeth to rot and fall out, but generally people do not protest the use of toothpasteat least not in my circles.

Isn't depression part of what people are supposed to experience?

Didn't we evolve to have depression?

Isn't it part of your personality?

Mood is adaptive. Being able to have sadness and fear and joy and pleasure and all of the other moods that we have, that's incredibly valuable. Depression is something that happens when that system gets broken, it becomes maladaptive.

The language describing depression is weak, we use the same word when it rains on your birthday and how somebody feels the just before they commit suicide.

Medications don’t make you feel happy, just not feeling sad about ordering lunch, or showering; you can more sadness without nullity.

Shutting out the depression strengthens it; while you hide from it, it grows. People who do better are the ones who are able to tolerate the fact that they have this condition. Those who can tolerate their depression are the ones who achieve resilience.

Inevitable is a dangerous word for the extremely long lived. Relapses are perhaps inevitable. Finding ways to tolerate the relapses are the key to surviving them.

Some find seeking meaning in their depression as the foundation to tolerating the inevitable relapse. Seeking meaning hoping to learn something from it.

Much great literature, great art, and no small amount of philosophy and spirituality, has come from people seeking meaning from their depression.

Love, grief, and possibly depression may be the unifying features of the humani condition, we should all strive to understand them better.

Seeking meaning and purpose won’t prevent depression or a relapse of depression, but it might allow you to better survive it.

Else, one day, the emortal just stares up at the ceiling until someone takes them off life support.

(Much thanks to Andrew Solomon, who provided much insight and inspiring words).