“… [The] pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain. Through the healing process of time – and through medical intervention or hospitalization in many cases – most people survive depression, which may be its only blessing; but to the tragic legion who are compelled to destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer.” (p. 33)
“When I was first aware that I had been laid low by the disease, I felt a need, among other things, to register a strong protest against the word ‘depression.’ Depression, most people know, used to be termed ‘melancholia,’ a word which appears in English as early as the year 1303… ‘Melancholia’ would still appear to be a far more apt and evocative word for the blackest form of the disorder, but it was usurped by a noun with a bland tonality and lacking any magisterial presence, used indifferently to describe an economic decline or a rut in the ground, a true wimp of a word for such a major illness… [For] over seventy-five years the word has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its very insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control.” (pp. 36-37)
“… [With] their minds turned agonizingly inward, people with depression are usually dangerous only to themselves. The madness of depression is, generally speaking, the antithesis of violence. It is a storm indeed, but a storm of murk. Soon evident are the slowed-down responses, near paralysis, psychic energy throttled back close to zero. Ultimately, the body is affected and feels sapped, drained.” (p. 47)
“… [Until] that day when a swiftly acting agent is developed, one’s faith in a pharmacological cure for depression must remain provisional. The failure of these pills to act positively and quickly – a defect which is now the general case – is somewhat analogous to the failure of nearly all drugs to stem massive bacterial infections in the years before antibiotics became a specific remedy. And it can be just as dangerous.” (p. 55)
*
I myself remember the first days when I started showing the symptoms of depression though, perhaps like many sufferers, I didn’t know what was happening to me. It was an early fall of 1992, in Albany, NY, dark and already cold. I would lie in bed for hours and hours. One day I heard a student from Puerto Rico, finding me in bed in the afternoon, say to my roommate, “Is he sick?”Attending classes was no longer possible. Everyday, I would manage to get out of bed very late night after the dorm became quiet and go down to the lobby. There alone on a sofa, I was reading. When the hour came when the cafeteria opened, I was one of the first students in line. Omelette with American cheese. Those working at the cafeteria must have thought I was a hard-studying early bird.
I spent Christmas and New Year holidays alone in the now almost empty dorm. I took a walk to downtown not to join the celebrating crowd but being alone was simply unbearable. I believed that watching people and sharing a bit of their joy would ease the pain.
Come 1993, my girlfriend joined me in Albany. I was already nobody in school, and by then all energy I am sure I had had before leaving home was nowhere to be seen. I was in deep disappointment with myself and also in denial. There is now no doubt that I was in a serious bout of depression. Looking at me slumbering in bed for many hours, she understandably complained. One night, listening to music with a CD Walkman in the hotel room we were staying at, I started crying uncontrollably. My thought was that all my preparation, financial or otherwise, of the past five years was being wasted. No academic achievement and the only choice I could think of was go home however painful the decision might be. It was a somewhat similar feeling I have been having these days.
I don’t recall whether someone suggested that I do so. But I went to see an advisor for international students. I told him that I had decided to return to Japan. He asked if I was comfortable with my decision. I answered “No.” He then asked if I had family support. To which I replied, “If I had support from my family, I wouldn’t be here.” I packed my stuff and got myself ready to fly back…
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