"Depressed? Just Shake it Off!" says my Brain (OR Lessons from Sabrina Benaim's Poetry)

Today we discuss Sabrina Benaim...

Explaining my Depression to my Mother.

Whoa.
This was the subject of our last fellowship.
I am told.

I am told because I was crying alone in my bedroom.
I was crying alone in my bedroom because I couldn't get out of my bed.
I couldn't get out of bed because my depression was sitting on my chest like a demon.

I could not attend fellowship.
In lieu of that, I write this because we all need better stories.
I was the kid who couldn't get out of bed due to depression.
Now, I intend to be the kid who attends fellowship through his depression.

The performance.

I love this girl; I think she has some serious chops.
Her poetry is moving and interesting, always coming back to the mother image and describing in simple terms her depression.

However, I do not dig her performance.
It is very raw, very faltering.
She takes a bunch of catch breaths because she cannot support the long and lengthy thoughts that she so well articulates in her writing.
Nevertheless, the passion she drives home over and over carries her through to the end where she ends with:

"Mom still doesn't understand! Mom, can't you see that neither can I?"

The depression

That, for me, is the crux of it.
Even if I stand here and describe every sensation of the night that I experienced, I don't think that I will ever truly understand this heinous beast inside of me.
I will never understand my depression.
It is a chimera

"Some days it is a bear holding a butterfly/Some days it is the bear!"

 So here are some actual texts from the night of fellowship:

-I'd like food
-But prefer to make it together
-But prefer to be left alone till I've eaten
-But can't bear the silence
-But can't talk
-I would have preferred to have been part of the [fellowship]

What can you or your loved ones do with that laundry list?

I have been told that depression is sometimes described as the porcupine disease because it is very hard to love someone with thorns.
The more you hug them, the more they hurt, but the more they need it.

 The anxiety

"Anxiety is the friend that depression felt obligated to bring to the party and I am the party, Mom"

I don't know why they seem to be so interconnected.
Depression and Anxiety.
Almost everyone I know with one has the other to some extent.

Why is that?
I really don't know.
Maybe there is someone out there who can explain it to me.

All I know is that when I am feeling low, I am also feeling anxious, hyped up, worked up to such a degree that I can barely sleep at night.
A week ago, I spent the entire night playing through an entire game of Portal 2 in one sitting.
Yesterday, I knew I was doing better because it took me three sittings to beat Dante's Inferno.

Some days I use my anxiety to be productive.
On the same night I beat Portal, I stayed up till seven in the morning rewriting a script and reformatting it in its entirety.
That should be up on my Patreon soon.
And why?
Because I had time. Because I was tired at not going to bed and feeling like I hadn't done anything.
When other people started getting up for work was when I realized that I had a problem.

No.
That isn't right.
I knew I had a problem in hour two of playing.
When I realized that I was tired, but wasn't nodding off.
I knew that I had a problem when I got to the point I wanted to stop and still did not stop.
I knew that I had a problem when I beat the game and still did not stop.
I know that I have a problem.

But, what am I to do with knowledge?
If knowledge is power, then why am I still sinking instead of swimming?
Because knowledge means nothing without practical application and how do you apply what you have learned against the instrument where you learn?
How do you build up a foundation under a crumbling mind?

The mother

I cannot divorce this poem from my own relationship with my own mother.

I was shocked at this poem because it is eerily similar to conversations that I have had with my own mother. 

The sad part is, I don't even blame my mother for not understanding.

How can anyone else understand mental disease if they have never experienced it when those who are suffering cannot find ways to articulate it outside the realm of art? 

So I point to my art.

I point to other people's art and hope that a sliver of a flicker of recognition passes through others and they say: 

"Oh, I get it."

In lieu of that, I have this suggestion:

The answer

Neil Hilborn. Joey.

"If you remove money from the equation, Joey would have been painting elk on cave walls. People would have fed him and kept him away from high places because god damn, look at those elk. I think that the genes for being an artist and mentally ill aren't just related, they are the same gene, but try telling that to a bill collector."

All that separates us from the Stone Age in Neil's poem is money.
I love that.
Everything about civilization is about the money, but at the heart of the human condition is

1. Community
2. & Art

This guy is my superhero.

I mean that literally.
He has other poems and there are other stories of people who don't want medication for their mental illness.
You know why?
Because they do not see themselves as mentally ill.
They see themselves as super-powered.

• They can see alternate planes of existence
• They can hear the thoughts and minds of others
• They can sense or go places no one else can

Those are the powers of superheroes. 

Characters such as Francisco Ramon: 

Source

OR Jean Grey:

Source 

OR Kurt Wagner:

Source

DISCLAIMER: 

I am not arguing against treatment for mental diseases.

I am not arguing for the abandoning of mental institutions or mental care or medication. 

World governments are doing that en masse, and although not the subject of this article, are absolutely the subject of a future one where we look into just how much we care about people mentally.

What I am arguing for is a change in perspective.

I know of no artist that doesn't suffer from mental illness.

Think about actors:

• We work 60 hour weeks
• for a job with no set pay/benefits
• for a limited time (anywhere from 4-12 weeks)
• where we are unemployed at the end of it
• where we can be fired at any point for any reason
• & is actively under/unregulated

It would take a particular type of person to want to go into that profession.

Nevertheless, these jobs are important. 

To quote everyone's favorite teacher John Keating: 

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."

-Dead Poet's Society (1989) 

Art is necessary. 

It is so, so necessary.

I know because it keeps me alive. 

Every day when I think about going walking until my legs fall off, of vanishing into the dark where no one can find me, these tales, these stories, sometimes my own are the things that pull me back from the edge. 

To paraphrase Neil Hilborn again:

1. At the heart of humanity is community.
2. And at the heart of community is art.
3. And at the heart of art is the artist.

If Joey were born in a different time, then he would have been taken care of.

People would look at him and think him inspired by the gods, or the muses, or whatever else is out there.

People would have looked after him because he was a holy man or a shaman or a dream interpreter or a doctor of the ragged edge of society. 

That is what artists are. 

That is what those suffering from mental illness are. 

We aren't mentally ill, we're just magic. 

We spin something out of nothing and sometimes we pay a price for it. 

I'm tired of paying alone.

Sometimes I just want to be kept away from high places.

Sometimes I just want somebody to say: look at those elk. 

That is the best I can offer coming out of an episode. 

Take care of yourself.

And take care of your sha-persons. 

They need it. 

How do you do that?

*shrugs*