For a months I’ve been flipping between this quote and a conversation a few years ago, when I 1st admitted to an acquaintance that I suffered from depression. He tried to be helpful and sympathetic. I remember him telling me I should write about it, that it was something that needed to be talked about more, especially in the African American community. I remember looking at him like he’d just confessed to being a necrophiliac.

Eyes wide, mouth slightly open, breath caught in the back of my throat. “…Um. What. In. The. Fuck. Are you talking about?”

It’s almost three years later and the suggestion sounds a bit less alien. But still, if I’m honest, given a choice between corpse fucking and having an open conversation around this issue? I mean, well, hell. They’re already dead, right?

But,

In order to be who you’ve never been you must do things you’ve never done.

So, here we go.

My name is Kwan and I have long term acute depression.

My hands were shaking as I wrote that. That’s not hyperbole, literally quivering over the keyboard. I’m not big on discussing my private life and even less so with this. So make no mistakes: you’re reading this as the result of much quivering, sitting, standing, pacing, chain smoking, writing, deleting and finally deciding to just hit the fucking “Send” button. This is not an easy admission to make.

But it’s a necessary one. It’s something I’ve been dancing around for years and I’m tired of the same old two step. The soundtrack to this particular part of my life is played out like Hammer pants. So, like a 12 stepper going to that 1stmeeting: the 1st step in solving a problem is admitting that there is a problem.

Because try as you might to ignore depression, over time it slips deeper into your life like an obsessed stalker. It runs up on you while you’re chillin’ with your folks, butts in when you’re with your girl and sticks it’s big ass nose into your work and day to day schedule, until the only choices you have are to curl up in a ball and let the disease kick the hell out of you, or take it outside and get medieval.

Over the last year I’ve come in contact with people, places and situations that have given me some frightening, but much needed insight into the long term effects of curling up and doing nothing. So I’ve made a decision. 2011 is the year I officially take this needy bitch out back and shoot it in the fucking head. Pardon my French.

It’s taken me a long time to get to this point-just about 16 years. From sleeping my way through my 1st year of college-thinking I just really, really hated Freshman math and bio-until now, I’ve had a lot of time to think about the issue and to eventually see it as an illness and not necessarily a judgment of character or sign of weakness. But that took a lot of time, and a lot of patience.  And it’s a day to day challenge to maintain that viewpoint.

For me, and I’m sure many others, there are quite a few barriers in the way of open dialog about mental illness. For me, the 1st problem is the name of this particular disease. When you 1st hear “Depression” you think, sadness. Most people’s immediate response is, “Yeah, I know what you mean. I get sad sometimes too.” True, there’s definitely sadness, but the long term cumulative effects are much deeper.  But when you’re in the throes of depression, the last thing you want to explain is that what you’re going through is a little more complicated than just being bummed someone ate the last of the Captain Crunch.

Clinical depression is defined as a state of extended melancholy, lethargy, mood swings and psychosis brought on by insufficient amounts of norepinephrine, serotonin or dopamine reaching the brain’s neurotransmitters. Other common symptoms include insomnia or hypersomnia, unexplained guilt or anger, anxiety, loss of interest in activities and withdrawing from social settings.

That’s the technical. The actual is that the longer one stays in a depressive state the more it erodes the sense of self. Everyday tasks feel like 10 ton boulders. The most basic interactions feel like the most dreaded prison sentence. Friends become burdens and joys become nightmares. This withdrawal from life, loss of interest in people and passions and lack of general emotion or empathy doesn’t leave much there, there.

Andrew Solomon’s The Noonday Demon gives a simple but spot on account of this peculiar devolution:

“I felt the disconnect slowly but relentlessly increasing. I began to complain that I was overwhelmed by the messages on my answering machine and I was fixated on that: I saw the calls, often from friends, as an impossible weight. Every time I returned calls, more would come in…I found myself burdened by social events, even by conversation. It all seemed like more effort than it was worth.”

I’ve always thought of depression like a black hole-a void so deep that even light can’t escape. Or like “The Nothing” from The Neverending Story-a living, breathing, emptiness that rushes over everything, sweeping away life like dust.

But this nothing leaves a peculiar something-an ache born from what’s not there. And like the stomach of a malnourished child can swell from a lack of food, it’s the very lack of interests, emotions and feelings that give depressives their only feeling. In her book “Prozac Nation.” Elizabeth Wurtzel describes this feeling as a kind of walking death.
My spirit, my emotional being whatever you want to call all that inner turmoil that has nothing to do with physical existence, were long gone, dead and gone, and only a mass of the most fucking god-awful excruciating pain like a pair of boiling hot tongs clamped tight around my spine and pressing on all my nerves was left in it’s wake.”

As much as I understood and communed with this book, it also brings to mind a second problem. Society’s association of depression and mental illness with creativity. Artists are supposed to be moody and sad. It’s what we do, right along with drinking and drugging our crazy asses to death before being heralded as geniuses by the next generation.  It’s the same line of “artist as social fuckup” thinking that caused a generation of horn players to nod out, trying to mimic Bird’s heroin induced jazz mastery.

And like a lot of young artists I bought into that shit early. Just about every person I admired growing up fit the bill to some degree. Even now I find myself drawn to creators who admit to their mental issues or display even a hint of that madness that we associate so closely with brilliance. A few years ago I was washing dishes and listening to Georgia Anne Muldrow’s Worthnothings (a telling name if ever there was one). I was digging the low key vibes in general, then I heard the song “Demise.”

Dying would be easier,

than stepping up to the plate…

I’m comfortable with my demise

One day it’s bound to come,

it will claim everyone, sooner or later

My discomfort comes from daily life

trying to to live and write…

…This melancholy is my crutch

But no one gives a fuck

I stopped what I was doing, sat and listened to the entire album on repeat for the rest of the afternoon. I’ve had similar sessions with Chocolate Genius, Tori Amos, Charles Mingus and others-communing with the genius inside the void.

There’s a certain “Fuck You” artistic coolness that comes with being able to stare coldly at others and snarl under your breath at their happiness. “What the hell are these people so happy about? The same old status quo bullshit. They don’t suffer enough to be TRUE artists. I embrace sadness!”

I remember the awe I held for David Foster Wallace and how, whenever I’d read one of his books, a small part of me rebelled against the notion of “getting better.”

“You see! Proof! If DFW can do it this PROVES that you HAVE to be depressed to make great art!”

I held on to this small glimmer of faith right up until he killed himself two years ago.

Silence around the issue is another problem, especially in African American communities. It’s very easy to associate depression and mental illness with weakness, and weakness is the absolute last thing you want to admit to in the hood.

Don’t want to get out of bed?

Feeling like you’re worthless?

Bursting into tears for no obvious reason?

Boy, you betta suck that shit up! Hold that shit back! And get back to the struggle of everyday life in America! It’s hard enough out here for black folks…

This prevailing attitude (which I don’t entirely disagree with), combined with a general cultural mistrust of the medical system and apprehension towards any forms of therapy has resulted in a community that has let mental illness go unchecked. And the effects of our lack of priorities can be seen in hoods all over the country.

Depression tends to be genetic and it’s not uncommon for families to have several depressed members through the generations. It runs rampant on both sides of mine, but I never once remember any discussions about it, at least not directly. I remember mentions of how a grandmother, aunt or uncle would get “a little sad,” followed immediately by instructions to just pray on it and let “The Lord Make a Way.” Now the last thing I want to do is disrespect someone’s faith, but drawing from my own experience, I’d strongly suggest a side of Wellbutron and some group therapy with that heaping helping of Jesus. Can I get an Amen?

I’m an Aries, the 1st sign and the baby of the Zodiac. And true to form I’ve always had a soft spot for beginnings-for the shiny possibilities that come with something being born. With that in mind I wanted to write this while 2011 still had some of that sweet New Year smell to it, and to set a decisive tone for my next 355 days.

This post is me drawing a line in the sand, starting to work out some issues and beginning to lift a very large weight off my chest. It’s an ongoing fight, but talking about it helps and like I said, I think folks don’t open up about this issue enough.  So this me adding my voice, talking it up, and screaming into a silence that’s been quiet for way too long.