Why I have been silent...
A note to my readers
Dear readers, subscribers, followers and random visitors,
Thank you, thank you! However or wherever you found Coming of Aging in the crowded universe of personal essays, I’m grateful. Every new subscriber reminds me that my dream of “telling true stories and telling them well” matters.
Coming of Aging was born out of turning the bend three years ago towards “old age”. I called it the part of life where my death is waiting. I was shocked, unprepared, indignant (moi), curious, trepidatious… and I wanted to flee to a college town where I’d be surrounded by people half a century younger. Wisely, I didn’t. Instead I started to document the journey here on Substack. Then, six months ago, I turned 80. Still upright and up-beat, I assumed I’d done my life review homework and would sail into this time with both equanimity and empowerment.
Instead, I hit a wall. And collapsed.
Wanting to turn these posts into a solo show I decided, just for honesty sake, to dip into an unresolved part of my life. The fragile porcelain jar where I’d place and buried those memories cracked. Depression hit hard. Fear and shame overwhelmed me, and stilled my tongue.
Depression for me arrives as an exhaustion of the active, thinking mind. Fresh thoughts stop and I’m left with the ancient swamp/purgatory of the limbic cravings of a fragile ego. Good enough? Better than? Failure? Ruination with no hope of repair? We all have such fears. In depression, though, they are convincingly bottom line real - and the rest of that stuff - i.e. my life - is a ruse. My psychological immune system is, in other words, shot.
The quicksand of the reactive mind draws me down. I know that struggling will sink me further, but my mind is terrified of just letting go. Even though I know better, I still act like a toddler scrambling to go forward while the adult has me by the diaper.
I’ve been through about 20 substantial depressions in my adult life, learning over time that my highs and lows are linked through what they call bipolar disorder (an apt word for a fragmented mind). Every 3 years or so, I’m pulled down, like Persephone, into the underworld. It runs in my family.
Forty years ago I discovered anti-depressants and anti epileptic (bipolar is a similar fire in the brain). These plus faith plus the kindness of friends help me across the swamp.
It’s been hard to accept, or talk about, this part of me when I’m in it. Fear says I will be banished for being different, or for being unable to pull myself together, or unworthy, or permanently stained. I don’t want to wear a black D (for depression)on my chest for the rest of my days. Telling you now brings me down off the ledge of panic. Hiding potentiates the shame.
It’s easy to talk about befriending this deflated part, to allow the feelings to be, to accept, yet it’s very hard from the inside. It’s easy to admonish myself to pay better attention when I seem to be spinning out more options than I could reasonably execute well, when I “go manic.” Sometimes I can do it. Sometimes I miss the signs.
I’m keeping the faith that fresh inspiration will come. It always has. Even now I can feel it rising.
Thank you for understanding and hanging in with me.
I’ve been thinking for a few days, that I hadn’t seen anything from you in a while. But many have been silent, or quieter, lately, including me. Words are not coming easily, at least not words on a page. I have never experienced the type of depression you have, at least not that I’m aware of, but I recognize the pattern, can see it looking back on my life. Then it being aided with heart disease I was unaware of, and the pain of that hip (now replaced and things are looking much better!), our bodies speak for us when we wish they’d just shut up. At least that’s how I feel. Now that I’m older, and not running around all the time, literally but also in my head, permitting myself (encouraging myself actually) to just be. To not have to do, which is so hard given the current reality and my, sometimes what feels like compulsion, to have a voice. We’re in a strange place where everything is speeding up, chaotic insanity and not the magic fairytale kind that you can just go with. This is dark. Yet, matching our responses to the frantic, chaotic is not (I sense) a way out, or I should say, a way through. Every challenge we face, are given, especially when we’re old, seems to me a way of tempering and fine-tuning. And when we’re quiet for a time as a result of these challenges, we’re doing some of the most important work. Our voices then are authentic. Our stories are ours, not borrowed. And even told imperfectly, they will resonate with those who need them most. Thank you for sharing this deep work with us.
Dear friend, the phoenix does not rise from the ashes without the ashes. You know this from the cycles of rise and fall you describe. I trust your psyche and your community. I trust your stillness and your seeking. Breathe. Walk out into the signs of early spring. Notice budding and watch your own fingertips for greening. Love and standing by.