David's Inferno (7 page)

B
Y
J
ANUARY
2006, I was completely back in the belly of the beast. Establishing a pattern that held, with occasional brief remissions, for more than a year:

At 4
A.M
 … 5 at the latest, I'd awake in a panic. My throat and heart vibrating. Racing. Sometimes in my solar plexus, too. I was still exhausted but couldn't go back to sleep, although with enough sedatives I might get another hour or two. When I did get up, I'd get outside as fast as I could. Sometimes I strapped on snowshoes and headed for the woods. Usually I'd just go out the front door and start walking. Walking. Walking. Walking. Exactly a mile and a half down the road to where it forks, and then exactly a mile and a half back. Fast. Real fast. Sometimes breaking into a run. Back. Shower. Maybe ending with a blast of cold water. Coffee. Yeah, I know, but while physically stimulating, it was emotionally comforting. Usually decaf. But sometimes the real deal. Some days, I had places to go and people to meet. Which I managed to pull off with various degrees of success. All professional depressives have their own techniques. For me, it took a combination of careful planning (where I'd be and when), occasional rehearsal (oh yeah, this is how humans are supposed to behave), fairly constant dissembling (even to myself, if possible), and, when all else fails, enough willpower to fake it until you're alone again. Or at least back home. Where there was no need to pretend otherwise. Around 9:30 or 10 every night, having staggered
through another day, I'd go to bed. My mind comfortably numbed by a drink or two and an hour or so of empty TV.

I'd sit up for a while against the pillows, listening to Wendy get ready for bed, knowing that for at least a few minutes my emotions wouldn't be a burden to either of us. I didn't want to read—it was too hard to focus anyway. I'd just sink into the luxurious sensation of knowing I could now rest from the battle, no matter how briefly. Like a piece of chocolate you keep rolling around on your tongue until the last taste bud releases its hold, I'd roll around in that drowsy state as long as I could—exhausted, but knowing that the demons were done for the day. They had no fight left. I could drift off whenever I wanted. As hypnagogic images arose, I'd rouse myself enough to enjoy a few more seconds of conscious relief. Those moments were delicious.

Unlike Hamlet, it was the sleep of sleep I craved (not death), but he nailed the feeling:

My sleep would be light. But that was okay. I also loved waking up … as often as possible … in the middle of the night: midnight, 1, 2, 3; the sweet realization that I could fall back asleep before the jitteriness again reared it's chaotic head in the early hours of dawn. Which, inevitably, it did.

Even though an unexamined life might not be worth living, an examined one can be too painful. One warm-ish day that winter, I sat on the screened-in porch in the back of my cabin, drinking a cup of chai tea, very spicy, a lot of cardamom. Trying to generate some inner fire. I went in to get my laptop and sat there, forcing myself to write … to dissect the moment, as if that would
give me some power over it. Instead of cowering, I'd look it right in the eyes:

The scariest thing about Hell is that it's the same old same old. We may not remember exactly what those poor souls did to deserve being frozen in whirlwinds, whipped by horned demons, or dunked in boiling blood—let alone having their heads screwed on backwards … a punishment I consider particularly savage. But, whatever they did, it's the fact they have to endure their torments
for all eternity
that really gives me the heebie-jeebies. I mean even being enveloped in the arms of your beloved (see Second Circle of Hell—Lust) or eating maple sugar candy (see Third Circle of Hell—Gluttony) could get old after a while.

I don't mean to romanticize the state. There's nothing romantic about it. Our fascination with our own or other people's suffering is always a little prurient or, to be generous, like that of a child who is fascinated by something scary … in large part to reassure him or herself she won't be similarly afflicted.

Sometimes I'm concerned that, by writing this book, I'm “profiting” (wouldn't that be nice!) from my own pain. But when I ask Wendy whether, in retrospect, I've been overstating my symptoms, she says that, if anything, I've been understating them.

In the Fifth Circle of Hell, the sad, depressed, and gloomy are eternally mired in the swampy mud of the River Styx. While I knew the feeling, I managed to cling to the assumption—then belief, then desperate hope—that my condition was temporary. While I'd never experienced this intense an episode of crazed instability before, I was confident that some medical intervention—Western, Eastern, Northern, Southern … who cared?—or act of
cosmological mercy would soon end this particularly virulent journey into my personal Hell.

Over the first few months of 2006, I tried just about everything. Acupuncture, amino acids (SAM-e seemed to help a little—the others seemed to just make me more jazzed), B vitamins, Bach Flower remedies, t'ai chi, some yoga, avoiding caffeine, avoiding sugar, eating more protein, avoiding carbs, and so on. They all seemed to help and then not. Like my system couldn't get any traction. I was still spooked by the idea of going back on meds. All I wanted was a little light at the end of the tunnel. Moments of feeling normal would trigger irrational optimism, followed by heartbreaking crashes.

When you're in that state, rational thought seems incredibly naive. The world is riddled with minor glitches, each of which is just waiting to build hurricane-like into a Class V disaster: elevators whose doors pause a second too long before opening, people whose names you've forgotten walking toward you, appointments you're five minutes late for, checkbooks that don't balance.

Your car doesn't start? Forget it. You're toast.

Every few days I'd crack completely. Utter hopelessness. Crying jags. I'd scream my bloody head off. Play squash as hard as I could. Sit in the sauna too long and then go into the shower and turn on the cold water full blast. Anything to earn me a few minutes of peace.

All I remember is trying to act normal; trying to act normal; trying to act normal.

By early spring, however, it became pretty clear that my uninvited emotional tenants, whom I'd been trying to evict using those various medications and therapies, had signed a long-term lease, were beginning to rearrange the furniture, and had no intention of being evicted. It was time to get out of Dodge.