Act of sacrilege: discussing the pervasive gendered violence on BBC Luther.

Britt Julious’ post on Blackness¹ and Voice reminds me of a time when I was referred to as being too — sounding — too white and Anglo for my own good in my own writing. This was way back when I was keen on pursuing a career as a nonfiction weaver of words. [Ah, teenage idealism.] Somehow, even through the written word does the accessibility and normalcy of white, English-speaking [erm, writing] slip through unnoticed. 

— Or perhaps it, too, is noticeable and we’re just conformists. But nah, I expect more from this generation of readers, online Homestucks or Wall Street New Yorker subscribers.

¹_{Term not for my usage, but in reference to permitted rehashings of her experience.}

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formerlyspectroscopes:

I started writing this post, and since it is so lengthy and took me so long I feel like I should publish it — although I’m a little afraid of what the reaction to it will be. I have a long history of severe clinical depression, and right now I am going through a particularly bad episode — and I just started writing because I think I needed to express how I feel right now.

When you have depression, everything is difficult. I feel as though I am entirely submerged and nothing can touch me. I feel as though I am looking up at everything from beneath a fathomless ocean — everything I look at is distorted by the water, which holds me at the bottom by an immeasurable pressure. I hear people talking to me and it is as if their voices are coming to me from far away and even farther in the past. I know that I have to get up, get dressed, apply for this job, go to that interview — but it takes so much effort just to breathe down here. And I know that if I want to do anything I have to swim against the water to do it.

But I don’t want to do anything. It’s all too difficult. It’s all too much. I don’t want a job. I know that I need one to be self-sufficient and survive. But I don’t remember why anyone would ever want to be self-sufficient when it’s this much effort just to keep breathing down here, at the bottom of the ocean — where nobody can touch you and nothing sounds right. I remember what it felt like to be well (or at least ‘better’): I remember that I used to want to understand the world, I remember that I wanted to complete my degree and become a career physicist, I remember that I wanted to write a novel.

It used to be so important to me that I should make a significant intellectual contribution to the world. It used to matter. I remember that. But the only thing I want now is to close in on myself; I want to curl up in a darkened room and close my eyes — to be free of sensation, and expectation, until the tide has receded and I can see, hear, and breathe again. But I don’t. Because I remember that there were things I once wanted and because I know that one day I will want them again. When I think about the ‘well’ me I’m filled with this overwhelming sense of compassion for her, because I know how delicate she is. I know that, given time, the petals which have closed tight around me will unfurl to reveal another — more friendly, more energetic, more passionate — version of myself: the girl who desperately wanted to be a career physicist and unravel the mysteries of the universe.

I also know that at the slightest provocation those petals will close up tight around her again — and she’ll be gone. That’s why I can’t just curl up in a darkened room and close my eyes; — because I don’t want to emerge into a world where I’ve fucked everything up for myself because I did the only thing I desperately wanted and probably needed to do and just stopped. That’s why I have to laugh when people call depressives ‘self-indulgent’: if I were self-indulgent I wouldn’t even get out of bed. It’s a constant struggle for me to do anything.

And I think that’s difficult for most people to understand because most people don’t understand what it is like not to be able to take pleasure in anything — most people cannot fathom the idea that you could be anywhere, with anyone, doing anything, and you would still be miserable. But that’s how I feel. That’s why I liken it to looking up at the world from underwater: nomatter where I am, nothing can touch me. You could lay your hand on my skin and I would feel it — but it would have no effect on my internal world. We are separated, disconnected. That’s what anhedonia is.

If you have never experienced anhedonia then all I can say is that in its extreme form it is one of the most distressing emotional states I have ever experienced: when nothing brings you pleasure, nothing in life has meaning. There is no respite, no relief. Beyond that, you question your worth as a person — because you are incapable of taking pleasure in your interactions with friends and family you feel as if you are letting those around you down: you’ve failed as a friend, as a daughter, as a sister. You feel empty, somehow defective — incapable of loving or being loved. Passionless.

Then, when you do feel something, it’s too much — it’s all too much. You will be listening to a piece of music, or looking through a telescope, or running your fingers through the fur beneath your cat’s chin — and suddenly it’s just too much: you’re overwhelmed with emotion that you can’t or don’t know how to express and you can’t bear it. You find that everything is tinged with grief: this musician lost his wife, that star is gone, this cat will die. And everything is desperately impermanent and desperately sad. And you are wasting all this time being depressed when you should be doing something with the life which is slipping through your fingers.

But you don’t know what.

And it is all too difficult.

And the worst thing is that nobody seems to understand — or even wants to. Because the ocean you are trapped under doesn’t just separate you from the world; it separates the world from you: — all attempts to communicate from one side to the other are hopelessly distorted or drowned out. Nothing people hear is what you meant to say.

I don’t even know what I am trying to say any more.

Except — that it is hard for me to be functional right now, and I am trying, and it is important to me that people know that I am trying.