~
I am sitting by your side
Around us, sickening branches claw the sky
The tower is shrouded
In her thick, grey shawl
~
Light is fading slowly
And I perceive new shadows amidst the fog
Our silence is broken
By nothing at all
The path leads beckoningly
Onward through the gate
~
The bell tolls for you or me
Time has come to leave here
Rest a hand against the cool stone for just a moment longer
Before looking to myself –
I am sitting by your side
And you are not moving
~
“I think I’m an 80s man.”
“How do you figure?”
“Last night I cried in bed. How’s that?”
“Were you with a woman?”
“I was alone – why do you think I cried?”
“Sounds like an 80s man to me.”
Guys cry, okay? It happens. This comes to mind because I cried last night. Poor me.
Going into this post I started digging into the physiological reasons for crying, and after a brief exploration decided that I’d be crying again if I spent much more time on it. Turns out, there’s no real consensus on why people cry. Or at least, cry emotionally. Crying out of pain is understood well enough, as well as histaminic reactions, but no one’s really sure what the point is of crying when you’re upset. Multiple theories abound, from basic sympathetic pain reflexes to something to do with smoke getting in the eyes of ancient humans when they burned dead bodies. I can’t say I’m entirely convinced by any of them, but the fact remains that guys cry. Apparently German guys cry between 6 to 17 times a year (German ladies cry up to 60 times a year – those bastard German men).
And as Jack Thibeau would have us know, it’s perfectly okay for us guys to cry, especially when we’re lonely. We get to cry when a great tragedy occurs, or if our hamster dies, or if the Mets win the…whatever it is the Mets might win if they won it. Ladies, however, are apparently allowed to cry more often, for longer, and more dramatically! Ladies cry when they feel insecure, or can’t solve some big problem, whereas us dudes cry when our relationships fail. And stuff.
My, all this research seems to make a lot of sense. By deduction, I’m a big girl. I cry often. I cry for great, long periods of time. I cry dramatically, like Gary Oldman. And it drives my wife absolutely insane. I have complete, utter meltdowns. Hours of inconsolable bawling, incapacitated and catatonic, and try as I might, I can’t stop. It’s not stubbed toe or dead hamster crying – it’s full-on end-of-the-world-and-I-never-got-to-watch-the-last-episode-of-Lost psychotic sobbing.
I’m not always like this. It tends to happen when I’m feeling beaten, like everything’s been going wrong and I’m worthless waste of air, and to top it all off I didn’t rinse the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher and now they’re all covered in food crud. That kind of frame of mind. Am I alone in this, or would you cry at that point as well?
In fact, I suppose what I’m really driving at is that, given a scenario that is very stressful and upsetting, is it okay to cry like a baby for a bit? And is it worse for a guy to do so than a lady? Am I a woman trapped in a man’s body, or just an infantile sack of melodrama that just needs to grow a pair?
When’s the last time you properly sat down and wailed until your head exploded?
Those of you who’ve been with me for a while will know of my ongoing struggle with depression and other, as-yet unidentified mental difficulties. From crippling myself to the point of catatonia to self-diagnosing as autistic, I have been struggling with these difficulties for pretty much all of my life. Many years ago I was on heavy antidepressants and undergoing extensive therapy, and while it certainly didn’t turn my life around, it did help me through some issues at the time at least.
And then I just sort of let it slide. I stopped the meds, and…nothing seemed to get any worse. I stopped the therapy, and I could still talk to people. My head was still f***ed up, but it seemed like I didn’t need those things.
I met my wife. We had our child. And throughout all of this, on and off, I was on the brink. The interesting thing is that my “condition” has mutated and changed over the years. What was once straight-up major depressive disorder turned into depression with a whole lot of other weird stuff thrown in there, and now there’s kind of just the weird stuff left. Is that a good thing?
Sounds about right.
I haven’t genuinely wanted to kill myself for over six years now. In fact the thought doesn’t really pop into my head anymore. However, I was bawling my eyes out because we didn’t go out to lunch the other day (all right, there was a lot more to it than that, but it sort of sums it up). I haven’t self-harmed in over ten years, but I still sit and stare at things for minutes on end. I repeat phrases to myself over and over again when I’m upset, and my speech turns into torrents of vowels and consonants that might mean something in Urdu, but I really couldn’t be sure.
So while I’m not “depressed”, I’m certainly not right in the head. And…sigh…I’ve never quite figured it out. Sometimes I behave like a sociopath. Sometimes I behave like I’m autistic. Sometimes I behave just simply depressed, and sometimes I share characteristics with full-on psychopathic disorders. None of them really quite fit. Not bipolar…nope.
Suddenly I can’t wait; I feel like I need to talk to this person, desperately, as though my very soul depended on it.
So a year ago my doc gave me meds. After ten years, I started medications again, and it hasn’t been…unsuccessful. I started with a mood stabilizer. Did a little, but not a lot. Added an antidepressant; sort of helped. Added a booster for the anti-depressant, but had to reduce the mood stabilizer or I might freak out. Still…I don’t freak out quite so much. Anything else? No real change.
Sort of feel like I’ve got those things on my arms sometimes.
For years and years my wife has been urging me to seek help. Step one was the medications. Step three is, presumably, mental stability and the ability to not feel like that creep from Iron Man 2 with the frazzling tentacles everywhere.
So what’s step two? Therapy, it turns out. And two days ago – after years of procrastinating – I booked my first appointment.
And you know what? I feel so, so relieved. As if all of sudden I’ve been freed from a form-fitting vice that has been slowly crushing me for decades. I haven’t met the psychologist, have no idea whether we’ll get along, but just the knowledge that the answers (if there are any to be had) aren’t solely in my hands anymore is like a great release.
Is this what AA members feel like?
Remember this scene from Blade? Yeah, sort of crushed.
Suddenly I can’t wait; I feel like I need to talk to this person, desperately, as though my very soul depended on it. Who knows…maybe it does. It might all go wrong; she might say there’s nothing wrong with me and that I should stop being such a baby, or she might say I’m beyond help and should be institutionalized. She might just not like me (I might just not like her). But for now, I’m going to leave myself open and hope beyond hope that this will help. Because for the past several years now I’ve felt my mind slowly descend deeper into complete insanity, and I’m pretty sure at some point it’ll be too late.
You don’t think I’m expecting to much from the psychologist, do you?
Satis Writes 