[poem] Still Metaphor

[kaberett]

Sickness is not another country.
It's an ocean, with checkpoints on the beaches
and border guards of stone and surf.
And oh, we vessels, we
put in, sometimes, to unanticipated harbour
surprised - delighted - by reprieve.
You, perhaps, may disembark, may embrace land--
but I'm cast off, compelled
to struggle through the storm and pray for calm.

Comments

[kaberett]

(The idea of "episodes" of depression, or "episodes" of ill health, is kind of baffling.)

[sylvaine]

I saw an ad at uni recently looking for people who "had had episodes of depression" but were "not currently depressed". I was a bit O__o bwuh? at it.

And this is a gorgeous poem.

[kaberett]

HAHAHAHA YEAH ikr I mean

I guess I've had a couple of points at which I could usefully say I was "not depressed" since I started medication like two years ago? but..

(thank you!)

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah I read the other day that people with severe depression will have something like four or five episodes in their lifetime, and that an untreated episode lasts about six months, and all I could think was well crap, here's another thing I did not need to be an overachiever in!

[kaberett]

WOULDN'T THAT BE NICE, EH

(I am the human being of 40mg of citalopram is all that is between me and screaming insanity and often it is not enough and in the meantime it's fucked my short-term memory sideways. SO.)

[jelazakazone]

Uh, interesting. I don't think of myself as having severe depression, but I know I've had probably 3 eps that lasted at least six months in the last 25 years. And those don't count the teen years. Fuck. I like to think I'm not severely depressed, although depression will sometimes rear its little head when I least expect it.

[kaberett]

so I think this is probably a pattern associated with, rather than a sufficient condition, for severe depression? Which I tend to handwave as being about e.g. how high you score on a test like the PHQ-9 rather than about recurrence. (For myself, I distinguish between "severe", that is how bad it is, and "chronic", which is about how long it goes on for/how reliably it will recur.)

[quirkytizzy]

But...people know that depression - and most mental illness - isn't about episodes? Cuz it's THERE ALL THE TIME, it's just whether or not you are symptomatic? And then only to degrees, because you will always display certain symptoms?

How do people NOT understand this???

[kaberett]

I am given to understand that there are genuinely people in the world who will have one episode of depression ever and then get better and it will... never be a problem again? I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

[shehasathree]

O_o

[fyreharper]

I would not go so far as to say 'it will never be a problem again', because that's unlikely, because I've learned that The Sads are a thing I can slip into if knocked out of balance, but... I don't think my biochemistry is default-wired for depression? But grief and isolation and forgetting how to be okay, for kind of a long time, is very similar territory.

Similar-but-not-(at least in the long term)-identical things sharing the same word, I think...

[birke]

I really like this metaphor!

[kaberett]

Hah, it riffs entirely off Susan Sonntag's Illness As Metaphor, which is an essay I highly recommend.

[birke]

OK, then I'll have to read the essay and then come back and praise the bits that are specifically yours. :)

[shehasathree]

Read the version that includes 'AIDS and its Metaphors', if you can get your hands on it. /rec.

[jjhunter]

+1

[birke]

OK!

[kaberett]

And belatedly, thank you for the compliment :-) Here is an excerpt from the introduction!

[shehasathree]

oooooh.
♥

[kaberett]

<3

(it is for you, too)

[shehasathree]

asdgkagobt!1! (really? For me too?)
this is even more awesome for (intentionally or not) engaging with Arthur Frank's "threat of your passport revoked" (he is, of course riffing on Sontag's Kingdom of the Pick/Kingdom of the Well, as the best of us do).

[shehasathree]

damn autocorrect

[kaberett]

(yes it is for all of us and you are very definitely One Of Us so, you know, here. it is a gift. <3)

yep <333

[jelazakazone]

This is perfection.

[kaberett]

thank you <3

a fellow mariner writes

[jjhunter]

at a doctor's
again asked for
are-you-experiencing-any-of
long list of symptoms
today?
next to
blurriness of vision
I write 'near-sighted with prescription
eyeglasses; otherwise fine'
next to
experiencing depression [etc, etc]
I write 'history of; on stable
medication regime'
because
I'm not feeling depressed today
was even verging on chipper
before filling out this form
but like being near-sighted
I would experience blurriness
of depression sliding life
back out of focus
if I wasn't using tools to cope and correct
(not feeling depressed today, though
just 'history of' and otherwise
fine)

I thought of you--

[kaberett]

we're leaky vessels. so
drink your fill of sunlight--
and then go about your life.

Re: I thought of you--

[jjhunter]

you—!

we're leaky vessels. so
drink your fill of sunlight--
and then go about your life.

<3 <3 <3

(that poem makes me so full of butterfly wonder yes every time I read it; thank you)

Re: a fellow mariner writes

[shehasathree]

Wow, this is awesome. "blurriness / of depression sliding life / back out of focus". Omg.

Re: a fellow mariner writes

[jjhunter]

Thanks for letting me know! kaberett's poetry has a way of pulling things out of me, and, shall we say, sliding even the hard things back into focus. :o)

[sfred]

Oh, yes. Thank you.

[kaberett]

You're very, very welcome. Thank you for saying. <3

[sophiacatherine]

Yes.

[kaberett]

Thank you <333