David's Inferno (38 page)

M
Y RECOVERY CONTINUED
through the summer of 2007. Like a tree straightening up after having been bent this way and that by fierce winds from every direction. Breezes would still come along, sometimes strong ones, but in the process of holding on so tight for so long, my roots had grown deeper and stronger.

I'd usually wake up at 5
A.M
. And fall back asleep until 6. I'd begun to keep a thermos of tea next to the bed and would spend the next hour sipping the tea, maybe dozing, mostly scratching our new cat, and letting myself dream, just thinking quietly about things, waiting for some idea that sparked something and got me interested in the day.

It seemed that every few days or week brought a quiet milestone. I went bike riding early one morning with my friends again. (I'd been riding by myself for most of the season … usually in the afternoon.) On another morning, I got up, took the tea with me out to the cabin and put in a few hours of work. I found I could start a small project and neither abandon it nor force myself to finish it by some arbitrary deadline. Occasionally, I'd find myself in the middle of a mild skirmish or major battle with my still-skittish brain and—whether by working out, nibbling on a pill, or just stepping back—find a way to make peace.

There was something almost exhilarating about being with people.
Being able to sit through a dinner or stand and make small-talk was a shocking breakthrough in interpersonal skills. I could make people laugh again. I could help people see things differently again. It was as if I had my own one-person cheering section in my brain applauding my efforts, encouraging every step, like you would encourage a baby to walk.

Late that summer, I was at a party, seeing many people again for the first time in years. I began a long conversation with an old friend about our shared experiences as “depressives in recovery.” As I began to explain my understanding of how the disease worked, I began to talk faster. Soon, I'd begun to rant a little. Just a little. I watched it. It was kind of fun. I didn't feel out of control. But, toward the end of the conversation, he said, “Well, you're still as much of an egomaniac as ever, Dave.”

The comment didn't just make my heart sink. It made the whole of me sink. I knew, and Wendy reassured me, that he mistook celebration of self with obsession with self. But I could see how he made the mistake and, in the process, resurrected the dichotomy I'd experienced my whole life between what I wanted to say and how people might react. Fortunately, that dichotomy continued to be slowly revealed for the paper tiger it now was. As that new sense of acceptance worked its way into every corner of my formerly hypercritical self, my observations increasingly came out in words that, while equally insightful, weren't threatening. Weren't downright mean.

Yes, I can be as caustic as ever. Yes, I can be as funny as ever. But it's entirely different.

As I was emerging in the summer of 2007, I read William Styron's
Darkness Visible
. When Wendy asked why that, of all books, I said: “It's like having a confidante.”

It was such a relief to read someone who took a clear-eyed, literary, and—of all things—sane look at the mixed states I knew so well. Styron captured the desperation without sounding desperate. He captured the anxiety without sounding manic. While he occasionally lost his sense of humor, he didn't lose his sense of irony.
Bottom line: he got right inside the madness and ripped it open, so the allegedly sane could see the guts of the thing.

Even in the midst of my experience, I wanted to write about it; I wanted to understand it; I wanted it to have meaning. Because, as bad as I got, I knew that I was still a writer—husband, father, son, brother, friend—first and a depressive a distant second. Writers tell stories. It's what we do. In the process, we maybe be indulgent, vapid, resolute, or wise. Often all in a single paragraph. (That's why we like having good editors.)

The more intimate the writing, the more difficult and important it is to maintain the authenticity every writer strives for—what people call “finding your voice.” I'd call it “aligning” not finding. Like when you hit the “sweet spot” on a tennis, squash, or golf ball. Something inside you just lets go and leaves you in a rare balance with the task before you. But, you have to “find” it over and over, stroke after stroke, sentence after sentence. In the case of memoir, you're definitely dealing with a moving target. It's too easy to be swept away by the drama of the thing, or stay safely on the banks. Both keep the reader at arm's length. Both leave the writer and reader with a vague sense of unfulfilled longing.

I'm no longer sure that's any but a theoretical problem. I have no interest in dragging anybody kicking and screaming into the experience itself. If you want to be really sad, I'd suggest
Of Mice and Men
. For agitation, there's nothing like having a few books about global warming on your night table. And for mixed states, just root for the Red Sox.

What books about mental illness
can
do is make the experience so human that it's no longer necessary for you to hold it at that arm's length … or vice versa. Deep depression can at times be as contagious as laughter. Fortunately, most people are immune to the former—or at least can be quickly “cured” by the latter.

I've chronicled some wild emotional swings here—including some written while in the belly of the beast. I've also tried to provide a comprehensive overview of the disease, although I do occasionally indulge in some plain-English versions of medical jargon. Like a poor-man's William Styron, it's
my
attempt to get right inside
the madness and rip it open, so the allegedly sane can see the guts of the thing … and also reassure the clinically ill that there is intelligent life on the other side.

In late August of 2007, I took off for a final trip in my 1990 VW Vanagon. After three years and ±50,000 miles of travel together—both around town and the country—our relationship was symbiotic, if not co-dependent. It wouldn't be fair to say it broke down all the time. It didn't. (Although it had every right to, considering how many of my worries, screams, and tears I'd subjected it to.) But it frequently did need major upkeep, as the various systems that were new two decades before decided they'd had enough of life on the road. We're talking the usual: brakes, wheel bearings, head gaskets, transmission seals, starter, fuel pump, alternator, thermostat, and odometer (don't worry, I told the truth when I sold it). There were also odder things that I didn't even know cars had: the rear main seal, AC Inverter, torque converter seal, plastic cooling pipe, and all the gas vapor hoses. Throw in some regular oil changes, tune-ups, and tires and altogether I'd spent about $10,000 to keep a $9,500 car running for three years.

That was nothing compared to the parts of
me
that had worn out at the same time. Those couldn't be measured in dollars and cents. Fortunately, I had no desire to ever replace them.

I didn't know exactly where I was going. I mean I'd kind of decided I was going to Cape Breton on the northeast tip of Nova Scotia, because I'd heard that its Cabot Trail has some of the most beautiful bike riding in North America. But as far as specific routes and way stations, I was going to make it up as I went along.

It was a pilgrimage of sorts. A chance for the me, the van, and the psychosis to make peace with each other. We had become acutely attuned to each others' idioscyncrasies over the years, and had learned to find a kind of perverse comfort in their familiarity. But it was time for us to give each other a wry smile, a poignant hug, and be on our ways.

Years ago, I used to do two- and three-day retreats occasionally. Alone somewhere, sometimes fasting. But, eventually, I realized that just wasn't my path to peace and quiet. For me, it was and is still traveling. Alone. Driving for hours, listening closely for faint sounds of disquiet from my heart or my van. Sitting alone in coffee shops and restaurants—the noise of oblivious strangers balancing the noise within, leaving me free to observe both.

Sleeping in a pop-top camper in a Walmart parking lot in Portland, Maine, is probably not on many people's lists of things they must do before they die. But, if you really want to experience the wondrous bizarreness of life on earth, you might consider it. Because the experience of waking up at 3
A.M
., sliding down off the sleeping loft, and staggering into the starry asphalt night to pee is an image will forever have a place in my personal Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not.

I can't quite remember how I ended up in a Walmart parking lot that night. (I still wasn't drinking, so that's no excuse.) I had spent the evening wandering around the Portland waterfront, ending up in a sushi restaurant where I watched a few innings of a Red Sox game at the bar, while three Japanese chefs effortlessly slivered recently dead, but still vibrant fish. They seemed oblivious to the game (as did the fish) until they heard the announcers get excited. Then they would glance quickly at the TV. After they did this a few times, I realized that all they cared about was whether the play involved their countryman Daisatsu Matsuzake, who was pitching that night.

I left well before the game was over, stopped at a Whole Foods for supplies, and drove around for a while trying to pick a cheap hotel. By then it was past 10
P.M
. I had to be at the docks at 7
A.M
. for a ferry to Nova Scotia. So, when I drove past a Walmart, I pulled in. All three of us—me, the van, and the psychosis found this decision rather odd.

But, you know? That was okay.

The trip was filled with a series of similar mundane, but, for me,
potentially mind-bending unexpectednesses. There was no way I was going back to Hell. But I still had to take a few more steps up my customized Purgatory-Lite, climbing through some terribly ordinary experiences that previously would have left me buzzed and distraught. It was humbling. But the whole two years had been profoundly humbling. I could handle a little more.

I got seasick on the ferry. I've never been seasick before. One minute I was inside the cabin reading a book, trying to get a good-looking woman to glance my way. The next minute, in an act of digestive and karmic retribution, I was clamping my mouth shut trying to keep my entire breakfast of trail mix from covering my shirt. I went to the bathroom, cleaned up, got a cup of coffee and spent the rest of the ride shivering out against the back railing with the cigarette smokers and choppy waves.

But, you know? That was okay.

When the boat docked five hours later in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, I walked down to the van, trying to keep down the dread that it wouldn't start, thereby bringing the entire disembarking system to a complete halt, as annoyed vacationers glared at me and my poor camper.

I got in the van and turned the key. It started, I sighed, and we drove off with a sense of accomplishment far greater than would have been called for by anyone else. With maps on my seat, I began driving south and east, occasionally on the highway, but usually on Route 3, the original shore route.

When it started to get dark, I decided to stay in a campground an hour or so away from Halifax, Nova Scotia's capital, figuring I could get up early, and stop there for a good breakfast … maybe even spend a day.

The campground was dank with grey sea air and many of the people had fires going. I walked around slowly, smiling and nodding at them and receiving smiles and nods in return. People smile and nod a lot in campgrounds. But no one offered me any marsh-mallows so I went back to the van to read the literature they'd given me when I checked in. The major “tourist attraction” was a
fishing village called Peggy's Cove, once known for its huge glacial boulders and well-photographed lighthouse, but now visited mainly because it's where Swissair Flight 111 crashed in 1998. I decided to pay my respects. So the next morning, I drove out of the campground, turned left, and drove forty miles or so wondering how I'd missed both Peggy's Cove and Halifax. Turned out … I should have turned right. In spite of frequent stops to ask locals who seemed as lost as I was—and consulting maps that made it clear that to go north and east along the shore, you often had to go south and west—I had retraced my steps for more than an hour. And, ultimately, spent three hours going 15 miles.