Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
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Category: Depression
In a Sad Corner of the Multiverse
Posted on February 26, 2011 in Depression Humor? Science
My current reading consists of three books crammed into my Kindle — Styron’s [amazonify]0679736638::text::::The Confessions of Nat Turner[/amazonify], Metaxas’s [amazonify]1595551387::text::::Bonhoeffer[/amazonify], and a curious but apparently true work of physics by Brian Greene called [amazonify]0307265633::text::::The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos[/amazonify].
I have to admire anyone who wades through piles of scientific papers in an attempt to explain how parallel universes — or taken collectively, a multiverse — arise from taking theoretical physics to its logical extremes. I don’t pretend to understand the math, so I am taking Greene at his word.
The concept shoves me into a place of despair. In its crudest form, consider that there are parallel Milky Ways with parallel earths ((Anyone who has watched Star Trek knows the theme)). On many of these there is another Joel, perhaps pecking away at his computer like I am, except his history has been different. Due thanks to the Universe issues from my lips that this is not the somewhere he lives on the streets (having never met his wife) or is even dead. But there’s a depressing thought that emerges as I read this and I find myself cursing conditions here.
It is possible, you see, that a new universe comes into existence every minute or so. And from this fruition, come new realities. One of these realities has brought me to a better place than this where I am successful or at least secure in a world where the politics are sane. I make a difference in that world. So why, I ask, did I get stuck in this time stream? Why have I deteriorated alongside the rest of the country? Why don’t I get to travel in a better one and stay there?
The despair grows unbearable when I think: “What if this is the best universe?” Ah, then it is tragedy all the way down.
Fork the multiverse. It’s screwed me.
The Paranoid Experience
Posted on February 26, 2011 in Depression
Paranoia burns both as one of the brands of stigma and as a symptom experienced by sufferers of bipolar disorder.
Science and Anti-Science on Depression
Posted on February 16, 2011 in Depression Thinking
Up to the podium they boldly walk and claim the Nobel Prize for themselves based on the same sort of reasoning that leads Creationists to dispute the Theory of Evolution. It amounts to “Science is not certain, so we have won the argument because we ~are~ certain.”
The Sad Place Beyond Chemical Imbalances & Stigma
Posted on February 8, 2011 in Depression Reflections
I don’t like the drama as some do. But I so urgently need to talk about it.
Alone in Bad Company
Posted on June 25, 2010 in Depression Journals & Notebooks
The worst diseases are the invisible ones. They are like a drawer that you can’t close and can’t see the reason why it won’t close. You can shove against it with all your might, but the pressure gets you nowhere or makes things worse. The state of my little finger is like this and, when it comes, so is my depression.
Last week, I felt especially out of sorts in my mood. I wrote:
I’m at that point in life where no one sees the promise in me anymore. Those accolades faded as I grew older and was derailed by my illness. I can’t see my future amounting to what it could have been. There’s the old, damaged dream of not being a millionaire by age 30 and then there is the loss of a vocation — the sense of a career stalled by madness. Those who might have been your respectful peers ignore you. You become the embarassing relative, the odd man married to the friend of the family.
Among others who don’t and won’t understand, you retreat into corners to look at magazines or take your place on the couch watching a game to which you give no attention when you are alone. In your own time and space, you sit with demons skilled in mockery. Between doctor’s appointments, you count emptinesses.
[[Ambrose Bierce]] defined alone as “in bad company.” This is you.
But only as long as the dread-fall lasts.
Treatment Resistance
Posted on May 15, 2010 in DBSA Support Groups and Conferences Depression Psychotropics Stigma
The reason why I take medication is that the benefits they offer in the stabilization of my moods outweigh the side effects. But if they don’t work, all you get are the side effects.
Epiphanies from the 2010 DBSA Conference
Posted on May 3, 2010 in DBSA Support Groups and Conferences Depression Mania Pointers PTSD
I wondered if I suffered from bipolar disorder at all, so well had my meds been working lately. The wash of mania seemed a dream fixed to an offshore rock.
Two Journal Entries
Posted on May 2, 2010 in Depression Journals & Notebooks Loneliness
Once in your life someone came to you when you had this ache like a brass cauliflower that weighs you down now. When she spoke to you, the heavy flowerets parted and — in its place — bliss was injected.
Fool that you are, you wait around whenever the mace strikes you and crave that feeling of release that company brings one more time.
Loneliness Catechism
Why didn’t you come over to me?
You looked like you wanted to be alone.
It’s when I have that look that I most want company.
Please Shoot Down This Blimp
Posted on May 1, 2010 in DBSA Support Groups and Conferences Depression Encounters
I’m reaching that point where my earlier fears about where I was being taken have manifested themselves for real: a blimp of a depression rides in the middle of my head and I can’t pop it. Mitchell from New York said that he took me for an extrovert: like so many, he doesn’t understand that the issue is not dislike of people, but being quickly tired by them. And I have come to a place — of exhaustion, fear, and disappointment — where I both crave and vomit the company of others. Some extrovert I am who has run to a quiet corner of the DBSA National Conference to let his feelings bleed into an LCD screen.
I think myself an odd duck — stuck in a place that perplexes even those who are allegedly most like me. I’ve wondered if I am truly bipolar, then am told that it is “not meet” as Shakespeare might have put it to label myself with the illness: I am required to see that I am a person living with bipolar disorder. In this place, I doubt I am even a person, certainly not like the ones who are all around me. I feel freakish, bizarre, a disturbing if interesting specimen of humanity who bores and perplexes. Then there is that other question: why, if I can remember the details about the things that I did while in episode, why can’t I remember the feelings that impelled me to be one way or another? I walk around feeling an imposter who takes Tegretal, feeling doubt that I belong among the so-called sane, and that amidst all these others I am a tile in the floor stepped on and ignored.
Last night I ate dinner alone and tonight I shall undoubtably do the same when there is no forcing together of the peoples by schedules and included-in-the-price servings at tables in the outdoor pavilion. A man comes to open his laptop on the other side of this table and I want to squeal Please go away. If I didn’t want to hear Glenn Close’s sister at 4 pm, I would end my day in my room. Someone please shoot down this blimp. It weighs me down.
The Rock Inside the Skull
Posted on March 23, 2010 in Body Language Depression
When I am very depressed — which is not now — my brain feels solid and hard. It’s the surest guide that I have had the Big One, the low that can only be borne by plodding steps and lowered head. Yea, they will write it off as merely bad posture. I will marvel at the adamantine of my cerebellum, the heaviness of my medulla oblongata. I will ponder the sharpness of the rock inside my skull and, when the feeling has toppled away like a raven falling from a cliff towards its nest, I will desire its return because it is only then that I can feel that I have a brain and am, in fact, alive.
Painful Dormancy
Posted on January 31, 2010 in Activity Body Language Daily Life Depression
The pain in my upper arms from dragging a small backpack from the lowest walkable territory to the highest in the San Diego Wild Animal Park is just one of the streaks that put me in a low place these last few days: Mel Gibson’s face in those commercials for his latest action film is another. I grew up knowing a younger Mel Gibson, one who didn’t have a pair of deep lines falling to each side of his nose like a thin, misplaced Fu Manchu moustache. I’ve been surrounded by ancient visages here at Lawrence Welk Resort, faces that crinkle at a grin, fall from the cheekbones and collect like lava below the chin line. This is Old Age and I am going to be seeing more of it in the years to come. Despite my wishes for youth, I am deteriorating. The life long eruption is that is me is approaching extinction.
I’m too tired to wrestle with my keyboard over this. Good night.
Depression-colored glasses
Posted on April 11, 2009 in Depression Reflections Writing Exercises
I barely notice that the colors have dimmed. Perhaps my eyes have half-shut –making things gloomy through my eyebrows.
