Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
Steven Wright

It’s very rare for me to get angry, certainly not of my own volition. I occasionally raise to righteous indignation, say, about unfairness of it all or how it sometimes seems the NHS couldn’t organise an orgy in a brothel, for another example, especially when it’s easier to support another’s (J) sentiments. However, I’ve not even been particularly consistent or good at that either to be honest – leaving J feeling unsupported or not understood.

Instead I tend to bottle emotions and sulk, as mentioned previously. One of the unfortunate side effect of this is that I also rarely feel intense pleasure either. J refers to this as my ‘flattened affect’, hopefully not severe enough to be a indicator of Schizophrenia (which seems to dominate the first page of search results – this is why I try not to use ‘Dr.’ Google).

There are two main childhood conditionings to this situation. Firstly, my parents were rarely angry – idyllic you may think, but as a result when I was told off it took on a far more scary prospect. Secondly, one of my aunts suffered from what is now referred to as Bi-Polar Disorder – a condition that eventually defeated her with tragic consequences. So, extremes of emotion carry a lot of baggage and I try to avoid at all costs in myself and by placating others, whether they want it or not.

I was slightly shocked therefore to be told how depressed I was by the Goldberg depression test; I scored 43 ‘moderate to severe’ depression when filling it without giving it much thought early this morning. (With a more concentrated effort this evening I cannot seem to get it above 33 ‘minor to moderate’, which is interesting in its own right – and I think a factor of the lack of weighting to ‘more serious’ symptoms, but I’m not going to dissect the possible rights and wrongs of that approach here.)

J’s score was much higher and when blogged about it has had many kind and supportive comments about how that is not surprising given recent events (thank you all). J does have a history of depressive episodes, that I have tried manfully to ignore and hope they go away while ineffectually trying to be supportive. I too was not really surprised, but once again found I could offer little comfort and it found it scary, even before I took the test myself. At the same time it’s a slight relief that many of the feelings and symptoms of tiredness, lack of concentration and emptiness have a consolidated label and ’cause’. I realise that my natural inclination is now it has a label, I can put it in a ‘box’ and ignore – must try to resist.

“If depression is creeping up and must be faced, learn something about the nature of the beast: You may escape without a mauling.”
Dr. R. W. Shepherd

The vexing question is: how to get to know (and accept?) this ‘beast’ within, to prevent it gnawing away at ‘heart’ and all that’s good and true? Can it be tamed or does it need to be let out? My instinct is for the former, but I feel this is a cowardly approach born from my deceptively efficient bottling plant. ‘Letting out’ sounds far too dangerous – someone may get hurt – and also difficult, as it means identifying the emotions, finding the words and being brave enough to expose oneself. Not qualities or skills I’m well practised or competent in.

Far easier to keep to see the parallels in the (yes, sophistic and oxymoronic) mantra that:

it’s far better to be a pessimist that’s occasionally proved wrong than an optimist who’s often proved wrong

I’m certain there are better lessons in classical philosophy, but currently I’m identifying with Eeyore:

The old grey donkey, Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, “Why?” and sometimes he thought, “Wherefore?” and sometimes he thought, “Inasmuch as which?” and sometimes he didn’t quite know what he was thinking about.
A. A. Milne

I’m very grateful my employer has been very sympathetic and would have given me far more time off than I’d be comfortable taking (silly, I know). I had booked lots of leave days in January anyway (use them or lose them), so the practical bit of my mind shifted a couple of those days around and arranged to get a laptop so I could work from home for the first couple of weeks too.

Why? you may ask.

I knew that being with and supporting my wife (henceforth ‘J’*) was important, traipsing to and from hospital several times, making lots of cups of tea, cooking and caring generally. However, there is a limit to how much use I felt I could actually be – no real nursing required and as I said in previous posts being in limbo wasn’t really conducive to a proper grieving.

As I said it was my bloke response. I knew I wasn’t going to be totally effective working from home (certainly wasn’t doing much more than email correspondence and commenting on a couple of documents), but felt I needed a way of keeping in touch with a couple of big projects I’m involved with and if I’m honest and grownup it was definitely part of wanting to keep in touch with reality and providing a distraction from/excuse for not facing up to too much uncomfortable emotion.

Last week I had meetings and commitments, so ventured back to the office. It also gave some space to J to entertain herself with things (like watching DVDs, listening to audiobooks, etc.) that she felt she couldn’t with me ‘working’ in the home. So, all in all easy to justify. However, it was tougher than I expected, to be honest. Keeping concentration and focus was tricky and completely exhausting (part of the reason for the gap in blogging, sorry).

Was I forcing the pace of ‘moving on’ by working on? Have I missed something? Probably to both of those. I do feel guilty that I wasn’t here when J came back from the doctors and cried.  By being otherwise occupied I feel that I’ve probably not allowed the space for discussions about emotional issues that J wants. We have had discussions – a couple even at my instigation – but not substantial and usually skirting around the main topic of this particular miscarriage, e.g. adoption, practicalities of appointments/next steps with various clinics and specialists.

What am I afraid of exactly? Partly it goes back to the not being able to feel involved in such an early pregnancy. Can I be upset enough – you know to that mystical appropriate level? If I’m too upset do I have the right to be as upset as I might feel when I haven’t been going through what J has physically and therefore directly more emotionally?

I’m certainly a sulker and bottler of emotions. It gets to the stage where I daren’t uncork the bottle though. I’d rather take them away and bury them elsewhere. Trouble is they do seep out of the sides… last weekend someone I didn’t really know – had conversed with online and respected as a professional colleague, but also as a decent chap (also about my age) – suddenly died. This almost completely tipped me over the edge, but in turn led to a complete paroxysm of conflicting emotions and guilt. When reading tributes to him online I was constantly bursting into tears, but how dare I be more upset by his death than that of my own child. I certainly cannot say that I knew him personally, so am I turning into the fraud of the public mourner I was despising in my last post?

As usual, no conclusions in this post. However, I have some days off next week, ironically as J will be attempting to return to work, and would welcome suggestions of what to do to sort my head out before I fill the time with pointless day trips.

*Apologies for those that may know her by a different name (hello, and thanks for popping by to see me too), but she’s blogging more privately than me, so don’t want to leave obvious clues/links.

It seems to be an important part of the process of letting go and making psychological adjustment. On Newsnight last night they were reporting on the various phases of emergency relief and aid that are needed in Haiti. Apparently, one of the lessons learnt from previous humanitarian disasters was that allowing survivors to identify and bury their relatives was extremely important, despite all the other major concerns and priorities in these situations, and without allowing for that can seriously hamper the recovery/rebuilding process.

It’s also witnessed on a non-personal basis too. When major public figures and celebrities shuffle off their mortal coil it now seems to be a fashion to have mass outpourings of public grief. Most notably in the UK when Princess Diana died (people have even written books about that aspect) – over a million flower bouquets left at Kensington Palace. Is that the same or can it be dismissed as mass hysteria, sentimental self-indulgence, grief porn or it is just part of our culture?

Can one truly grieve for someone you didn’t know? Indeed this then raises the possibility that it’s a choice or lifestyle thing. Is it a 20th century ‘middle-class’ affectation (in the very broadest sense – not suggesting for a moment that rich or poor don’t grieve). Certainly some think that grief is a ‘luxury’ – I first heard this phrase/concept on the radio the other day from a widow of British soldier killed in Afghanistan, and it resonated to a certain extent. However, this can be actually be traced back to the Herbert Spencer’s 19th century writings The Principles of Psychology where he equates grief to self pity. Again, like Hope, it seems to be something only really felt by sophisticated life-forms

Grief certainly seems powerful; and as a bloke that tries to avoid strong emotions where does that leave me? It seems to be a super-emotion – a collection/combination of smaller ones, which depending on the circumstances can include: sadness, pain, guilt and possibly even relief.

There are, we are told, stages to grief – five or seven – fashioned into ‘models’, like a prescription of steps you must follow or face the (nameless) consequences. But what if you are grieving for several things or another tragic event occurs before you have time to process the first – as in our miscarriage in October swiftly followed distractions of my birthday, Christmas and then another miscarriage – where does that leave these models? Especially in the situation we find ourselves now of knowing a miscarriage is on the way – when does one start grieving? Is there indeed a duty not to, to stay strong for the upcoming pain and distress.

If the child from our first miscarriage were born it would probably be their first birthday today. So, it’s a particularly odd time to be considering grief. I found it difficult then and while counselling made it clear that it’s fine to feel grief and misery I don’t know whether I do or if I do in the right way. The ‘there is no right’ way philosophy doesn’t seem to comfort me somehow. It creates too many variables and makes it even more difficult to process.

The most troubling question, as I privately sneer at those who grieve for celebrities they could not know, is that I didn’t know those embryos – collections of cells that didn’t even have a conciousness or nervous system – how can I grieve for that? Partly, I guess, it’s the extinction of Hope (that again) in each case.

Certainly, in  these circumstances, it seems it will always be fundamentally different for the ‘father’ and ‘mother’ because of the lack of bonding opportunity and direct, physical connection.

So there are my random thoughts on the matter. I cannot answer the fundamental question of whether I can believe in grief, so I must conclude it’s difficult whatever way you look at it.

All over bar the screaming and mopping up.
my wife

So we wait in limbo again, but there is a big difference when you are waiting with Hope holding your hand, as last week, and when Hope has betrayed you.

The former may be tense, but the latter aches in a different way. The discomfort and pain seems to move from ancillary muscles – like shoulders, arms and legs – to the heart.

Normally nasty things come with little warning, like a car crash or accident. Even if it seems inevitable to an observer (i.e. “I could see that coming a mile off”) the protagonist is usually surprised or they would have changed their behaviour/direction/reaction.

This is quite unlike that. There is a certainty that provides no comfort and a resignation of waiting for the second punishment – the double-whammy of which seems really unfair.

One could argue that the events are quite different, the first is mainly emotional and now we’re merely waiting for the physical reality to catch up. However, this limbo state does not afford the space for handling the emotions – there is a different sort of tension that blocks that. There is also a steeling yourself to cope with the physical pain to come (well for my wife), but I feel the need to prepare too – not sure what for exactly and it’s really difficult when feeling exhausted from the first event. This leads to, for me at least, a numbness of spirit and soul.

everydaystrange quoted in her comment on my previous post:

All human wisdom is summed up in two words: wait and hope.
– Alexandre Dumas

As I seem to hate both at the moment, it’s probably quite a appropriate I feel dumb-struck and inhuman.

Hope is termed a theological virtue because its immediate object is God, as is true of the other two essentially infused virtues, faith and charity.
Catholic encyclopaedia

It’s also religious thing as part of the sustenance of belief:

“…the hope of salvation”
Bible (whichever version you like) – 1 Thessalonians 5:8

but it must be more than that to survive into the increasingly secular society.

It’s used regularly as a plot device, for example in The Sandman when the Dreamlord fights a duel to regain his helmet he wins the metaphysical fight with a softly delivered, but triumphant move at the climax:

Chronozon: I am anti-life, the beast of judgment. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, goods, worlds…
…of everything.
Ssss. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?

Dreamlord: I am hope

Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes

And just about any other novel you care to read, or TV/film drama, really – the protagonist is on their last legs – about to lose hope – when something turns and you’re into the home straight.

Hope certainly is a powerful emotional hook/pathos to tug on the old empathy – we’ve all experienced it. It’s ingrained from early childhood of hoping for Father Christmas and what he’ll bring.

Is that healthy though? Is it really the saviour/resolution it’s set out as?

Hope can be a catalyst for so much else too. It can turn the satisfaction of basic needs into avarice/desire by just hoping for a little more. It can lead to procrastination, where one hopes that something will not need doing or something else will turn up instead. It can lead to an unsettling constant change as the hope of better things/greener grass over there takes hold.

It strikes me that it’s very closely aligned to luck – it’s elusive and unreliable. If you cling to or expect good things then you’re setting yourself up to be dashed against the rocks of fate in the storm of eternity.

So we humans are great at exploiting hope, or being exploited by it, but from where does hope spring?

According to mythology Pandora‘s box (or jug, apparently, if we’re being authentic), which when first opened released all the evils on mankind except hope. So, does this mean that Hope is the mitigating force? This seems to be the prevailing interpretation today, but I would argue alongside the author Hesiod that it’s another evil, “no good for mankind, as Hesiod writes that hope is empty (498) and no good (500) and makes mankind lazy by taking away his industriousness, making him prone to evil”  [from wikipedia]

Hope grabs hold of you as you cling to it. Hope insinuates itself further and draws/lulls you in. You willingly feed it with any event that supports it and therefore grows and makes you feel secure. However, as Hesiod wrote it’s empty – only a false sense of security. Ultimately, there are other unknowns and forces at work that don’t play by those rules and therefore the shock and cold turkey withdrawal when you’re faced with cold hard reality are all the worse.

My name is Seb; I was a victim of Hope last week.

Hope is an evil bitch.

I’m blogging and tweeting about my personal life, feelings and emotions (well they may come later).

It’s been a hellish tense week of waiting before my wife could get repeat HCG blood test to see if a most unexpected ‘Christmas present’ positive pregnancy test (which was accompanied by much bleeding and cramps) was going to be viable or not. Last week we had a score of 64, so we were looking for about 1000 today. The hospital had a backlog and kept us waiting (at home luckily) about 11 hours for the result was phoned in (37). So, tears before bedtime and now no motivation to sleep, despite a medicinal hot toddy.

The worst is knowing that it’s not only bad news now, but there’s worse pain and suffering to come. They also want to do another test in two days to see if it’s going away quickly enough or needs ‘intervention’ (last time that happened about 18 months ago infection followed and that was not fun).

Anyway, this is just a brief post to replace the horrid hello world while I’m still concious.