Mind, Ravine

Ravine.

I have no other name for the recurring dreams I've always had. I'm standing on a beach and the tide is surging forward in screaming waves and angry froth. I turn to run from it but the sand is a high, impenetrable wall.

Or,

I'm in an underground train station, among muck waters, and always darkness. Everyone goes about their normal business as if normal business was swamp and slither and sulfur. On some of the better sleep-nights, I'm sometimes hovering above the water but for the most part, I'm always trudging and wandering deep channels. The waters are always too dark to see through to the bottom.

Or,

I finally see the clear waters in the distance. A stream dotted with fishermen, a sparkling pond, my eyes fixate as my body is somehow always forced past or away from it. I'm always on a buzzing, twisting highway.

Or,

one of my favorites. My childhood river, the Allegheny. The river where I once found a floating, dead pig lapping the shore. The river where I almost drowned when the city's sewer emptied after a rainstorm. The river with a silty bottom shaped into deep hills and ruts from the current. Sometimes 6 feet, sometimes 45 feet deep. In dreams, I am standing on its shores and being forced (by someone unseen and unheard) to cross it without touching it. I could not use a bridge or boat. Sometimes there were ropes to shimmy and sometimes there were dilapidated cable cars. And the other side was a giant wall or steep slope that threatened me downwards into the putrid river.

Always walls. Always ravines. Always dark waters & tanglement & sludge.

Always hopelessness.

One must take hopelessness seriously. With hopelessness comes the slack-face, the bed weighed down with a wilting body, the long gaze at what needs to be or should be done but the limbs not responding. The resisting body. The mind, its back turned. It's an attention to ceilings or that dust behind the door, but not enough attention to be curious or responsive. The sink is a city of dishes. The clothes are mountains in the bathroom. The sun's fingers come through the windows and recede, having touched nothing.

A depressed person will sometimes resort to science. A depressed person is sometimes well aware that they are a walking petri dish of imbalanced chemicals. That they are a piece of bad meat. That they are a processor with absurd coding. A depressed person forces a smile because of science. Steps into the puddle of sun because of science. Listens to upbeat tunes because of science. Forces the heart to pound, the body to sweat, because of science. Trudges through the sludge, because of science. Crosses the river without swimming or treading, no use of a boat, or a bridge, because of science.

*****

Today is World Mental Health Day. Mental illness--like any disease--is an objective, physical problem that affects the mind first and likewise affects the body. Like with cancer, there is reciprocity. It is handed down the family line like a soft piece of coal that cannot ignite. It will leave residue on everyone's hands, but warms no one. Yes, it has led to remarkable ideas, books, revolutions, art, and motion. But not every person with a mental illness is a manic, creative, inspirational person with a creative tool in their hand. They hurt people, they hurt themselves, and they struggle. They are the average ho-hums who work their jobs and go home to their family or to no one. They're the successful executives who philander and travel. They are the trying-hard parents with bad luck. They are the trying-hard parents who do everything perfect. They wait your tables, sign your checks, teach your children, and deliver your mail. They're the stars of your favorite feel-good movies and they're the people you would trust with your life.

I wanted to make myself like the ravine, so that all good things would flow into me. -Hannah Gamble

There are no quick rewards for the depressed person. It is a matter of making a channel and then guiding one's boat through it, day by day. -May Sarton