The line comes from a Moody Blues song on their album The Keys to the Kingdom. And man, does it fit my life.
WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
A journey through major depression is not a pretty thing. And no, I am not ready to check out in the classic sense, so calm down, Kelley. But I am ready to throw down the keys to the room in my very own personal Hotel California, and walk out into the sunshine. I just don't know how to do it.
This isn't my first rodeo. I've ridden this bronco named Depression more times than I care to admit. The scary part is how young I was the first go-round: 12. Yep, you read that correctly: 12. I know where it began -- staring, at age 10, into my father's coffin, lined in white satin. I can remember sliding open the big mirrored doors of my mother's medicine cabinet after getting home from school and staring at her bottles of Librium and Valium, wondering if it was enough to kill myself. I didn't try it, not because I was scared of dying – after all, my father was dead, the one person in the entire family who best understood me, and I missed him. No, I didn't try because I knew that if I failed, my life would become utter hell, much worse than it already was.
Now, we're talking about late 1972, early 1973.
I would like to say that there was some miraculous thing that saved me, something big and spiritual and all that. There wasn't. There was just music.
It's always been the music that has made a difference. Not my own – I try, but I haven't a musical bone in my body. No, I just have good ears. Beethoven. Moody Blues. Sibelius. Fleetwood Mac. Verdi. Genesis. Mozart. Heart. Hindustani ghazals. Roxy Music. Urdu qawwali. Cranberries. Celtic folk music, especially harp. Tangerine Dream. Indian raagaa. I have a knack for finding pieces of music that either take me out of myself or reconnect me to that love and acceptance I've missed for nearly 40 years and help me accept that the yearning is simply part of who I am. And it's usually kept me going through the subsequent trips on this ultra-dark merry-go-round. It hasn't always – I've sometimes felt like a spring bulb buried under six inches of dirt and humus and mulch. But usually there's been a springtime of renewal.
This time around, I'm still waiting for that season of the soul's rebirth. Where the hell is sweet Orpheus when a girl needs him?
This time around, I am still waiting for the appointment with the psychiatrist who can prescribe something that makes the pain recede, eases the howlingly cold emptiness so it mellows into some softer psychic weather. Meanwhile, I keep deep-sea fish in the freezer and the darkest chocolate available in the pantry.
This time, I'm still waiting to “check out of that room full of sorrow” and step out into the blazing light and all-enveloping warmth of a midsummer noon redolent of roses.
And I hurt.
I hurt in my heart. I hate what my brother did to my mother. I hate that I did not have the courage to confront him over his betrayal of her trust before his final illness. I hate what he did to the trust I reposed in him. He's dead now, and there's no do-over.
I hurt mentally, staring at the wreckage of all my dreams. I hate feeling torn between what I sought for my life and my dharma as a daughter. I hate staring at the wreckage of my dreams and wondering how to salvage anything at all. I hate knowing I sacrificed all my art for the scholar's life, and now I'm trying, ever so painfully, to recreate that artist's eye and hand, to recapture the storyteller's voice, and still save something from the years of grad school.
I feel stuck.
I try to take good care of myself. I eat whole foods – there isn't a pre-packaged meal in this house – and I take extra Vitamin D and calcium, and Omega 3-6-9 oils and kelp and glucosamine. I'm slowly, gingerly trying to ease back into a yoga routine, being ever-so-careful to not re-injure my fragile spine. I try to give Violet good quality time every day. I try to get enough sleep, to let go my worries and fears for the children I encounter as a substitute teacher. And I try to find some little thing I can give to my husband, who is so patiently waiting for his wife to return to the land of the living, that dear sweet man who trailed after me to Texas and Amsterdam and India and back again, and watched in impotent fury as his in-laws tried their damnedest to tear me apart again and again. Who kept me, that first terrible winter on the dissertation trail after my mother's failed surgery, from jumping into the cold black depths of the Gordengrachtel as the snow fell. I can't find enough to give him, but still he stays. And I thank Fate for bringing him my way.
It is nearly mid-April, and the redbud trees are blooming, the daffodils are nearly done, the tulips are beginning to open, and the robins are looking for the wherewithal to build their nests anew. But in my heart, there remains a skin of ice over the still, deep tidal pools. I'm waiting, sadly, quietly, for the thaw, the warming winds of the south, the return of the muguet des bois and the first roses. I'm still trying to find the door that leads me out of this prison, and I'm not going to quit until I find it.
I know it's in here somewhere.
But that's enough of my kvetching for one night. Grab a drink and a seat and tell me, what's your f*@%ing problem?