On Mental Health

Confession time: Rosalind Little started this blog as a way to help her deal with her depression. She didn't want to tell you this. Because, well, it doesn't exactly seem like a selling point for readers, does it?

I imagined that I would be prone to long gloomy nihilistic posts about the state of the world. But now I think it is most honest to come clean. And that I should maybe just try to talk about depression as an aspect of my life, which is what it is.

Besides, it's not like I have any readers anyway. Which is just fine for right now.

While we're being honest, Rosalind Little is not my real name. This is because I'm an academic, and I teach undergraduates, and they understand very well how to google their instructors, and I'll be looking for jobs in the next few years.

So I can't pop up on Google as a depressed, Regis-and-Kelly-watching, maternally-impaired, would-be romance novelist. Besides, I'm vain about what former high school classmates might potentially find about me online. I hope you understand this.

If you've never had trouble with depression, it's hard to understand what it is like: a shifty little mood that sits on you and doesn't get off. It skews everything you think about. No, actually, it's not exactly a mood. You don't forget about it after somebody says something funny or you have a good day. But you might PRETEND like you do. At least I do. I have put in some really intense effort into pretending like I'm not feeling as bad as I do -- "hello! how are YOU today?! What a LOVELY day it is outside! Would you like a cookie?" -- so that I hopefully don't come across as detestable and self-pitying.

But then, of course, I get really angry when people I love don't understand how bad I feel. I don't understand why I can't get people to take it more seriously, to help me out. That's part of the charm of depressed people. We're cute like that.

Depression, as I experience it, makes nothing reliable. Not my own self-assessement. Not my friendships and relationships. Not the parts of life that I assign value to, and not the things I enjoy. Everything is vulnerable. When I'm really down, I feel like I am standing in a train depot with a million heavy bags hanging off of me, that I don't know how much longer I can stand, and there is no solid wall to lean against, much less some place to sit.

If I were reading this, I would probably be armchair-psychologist enough to wonder: why depression, Rosalind? What's wrong with you? Childhood trauma? Or is it just some bad wiring in your brain? What gives?

And I wish I could tell you. But I have no idea why I've been having these problems for the past year or so. Well, I have a few ideas. But I don't have any kind of satisfying air-tight story about what it is that causes it: that it is definitely all chemical, or that it is definitely all situational, or genetic, or due to childhood trauma, or whatever. I know being alone during the day doesn't help the situation. I know that I have a few lifelong tendencies (self-criticism, rumination, etc.) that make it worse, too. But I don't think either one of the those things cause it.

Sometimes I convince myself I'm not really depressed. I'm just another self-pitying, bookish, upper-middle class white girl with too much time on her hands. I need to stop feeling sorry for myself, dammit, and do something for other people for a change! But I'm starting to catch on that although it sounds admirably socially responsible and self-aware, that kind of thinking is really a trick of the depression. It's a way for me to talk myself out of doing something to stop it. I need to get well to be able to do good for other people. I need to get well to be able to be decent to my family and friends. And getting well involves admitting that you're sick.

Sometimes I convince myself that depression is just a rational reaction to an unfair and cruel social order. That we tell ourselves that depression is an individual-level problem, that it is something wrong with people psychologically, when in fact it is something wrong with society, something we all bear responsibility for. And maybe this is true. Who knows? But I'm doing well if I am combing my hair every morning, much less taking on remaking the social order all by myself. At some point one must narrow one's vision to what one can control.

I don't plan to dwell on the specifics of my depression in this blog, but I don't know why I should hide it either. Like it or not, it is part of who Rosalind Little is right now. I hope not forever.