It’s dark. You are cold. You sit anxiously in the doctor’s office wanting to get better, but you are afraid of losing the ability to get insurance, afraid of losing your security clearance for your job. What will you say then? The family doctor—not trained for this particular thing, may look at you with something less than sympathy, some quick look at the clock on the wall and a sigh. They will likely hand you a prescription based on what the drug company is pushing, and it is not a warm comfort to hold that paper in your hand when you need a life preserver right then and there.

Please don’t write it down, you ask. The doctor picks a symptom: insomnia. Your secret stays your own.

But what does it mean if you deny yourself? What part of yourself have you given away?  Maybe it’s something you rather would keep. What do you owe your fellow victims? Make no mistake: depression of any type can kill. Suicide is not out of the equation. And the lesser costs are huge. Still, coming out has consequences, and when you are unwell, you are not going to be charging on your stallion, sword and banner firmly in hand.

Besides, what club would you join? Think of Tom Cruise attacking Brooke Shields for medical treatment of postpartum depression. Even when public outcry forced him to back down, what happened was exactly what mental health patients fear: discrimination, whether subtle (you know she’s been hospitalized), or overt, such as a direct attack like his. Are you then, an object?  Not sexual, not human, but a mental patient, a diagnosis—something to be feared, scorned, ridiculed or locked away? We have not gotten beyond the taunts of children on a playground:  nut job, whacko, loony, nut case, fruitcake, batty, schizo, screw loose, insane, deranged, demented—fucking crazy.

So, in the end, whose side are you on? Is the black man on the street corner, reeking and tattered, preaching to an imaginary audience the same as you? Is Brooke Shields more palatable? What about your coworker staring at her computer with dark circles under pain-filled eyes? Will you stand with them, or will you walk on by?

You tell your husband your diagnosis. Oh, he says, pausing for a moment. I thought you were bipolar. A slight shrug as he strolls away.

Tagged as unstable by the healthy in one indifferent roll call: Depressed, crazy, schizophrenic, bipolar, premenstrual, mood disorder, histrionic, emotional, hysterical, Woman.

It is well-known that the word for overwrought craziness, hysteria, comes from the Greek word for uterus. Have we not moved beyond these well-trodden paths? Does that make disclosure harder yet for some? While it is true that more women than men are depressed, in seasonal affective disorder, when the men get depressed, their symptoms are far worse.

 

I lived on Summer Circle once, in a neighborhood called Summer Place. It made me smile.

 

My dad gets “antsy,” he says, when he talks of winter coming. Did he gift me this unwanted inheritance through environment? Through our blood? He has never named a mood disorder, but he admits it in how he plans his life. Aggressive in his one-man war, he walks outside six miles a day, winter chill or not. Self-medication: St. John’s wort, vitamins, sunshine, exercise. I have watched anxiety track behind his face, a trapped animal looking out at dimming light. My brother, our cousin, and I trail this bad gene behind us like a hex that somehow passed by more fortunate cousins.

My dad and I moved south.

 

I’m only crazy half the year: half nuts. And the other half year, I think I can pass. Even so, I know that I can drown.

If you’re so damn sick, go to the doctor, the shrink, whatever. Take some meds and move on, for God’s sake! Sure, try them all. I suggest it. However, the meds are a sledgehammer on a condition made of glass. Some sufferers do well. Some are sunk further under unreasonable side effects. Talk therapy would seem silly for such a chemical concern, and yet it helps. Our thoughts are chemical too, you know, and you do not have the luxury of a single drowning, murky thought. What helps for me, and many people, is the simple, obvious, cheap, and natural one: light. They make light boxes for just this purpose, and you sit for awhile every morning trying to pull your foggy thoughts up and let the light hit your eyes. In the cold dark mornings of midwinter, I drink coffee and watch the news with the comfort of the light box. Dr. Norman E.  Rosenthal’s book Winter Blues has worked better for me than drugs or therapy. A psychiatrist who first described and coined the term seasonal affective disorder and discovered the benefits of light therapy, he speaks with authority; Dr. Rosenthal has suffered from seasonal depression.

 

Yearly, my brother calls me from Detroit. He wants to move down south.