Rainy Day Healing

 

Making My Peace … with a memoir of madness

 

It was an impulse purchase, bought in a hurry, without even looking at what I grabbed. I was early, on my way to meet a girlfriend for lunch, and I raced into a second-hand English-language bookstore. All I knew was that it was small, light, a hardcover, and cost three euros. But she arrived early, and I didn’t look at my purchase until the next day. I had bought William Styron’s 1990 Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness. I didn’t even know who he was.

The author William Styron (1925-2006) wrote Sophie’s Choice (1979), adapted into the 1982 award-winning movie set in Brooklyn starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline.

Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness is the author’s account of his first experience with clinical depression over three months in 1985. The book began: “In Paris on a chilly evening late in October of 1985.” What a coincidence! I’m in Paris right now!

In October 1985, William Styron was in Paris for four days to accept a literature award and to attend a luncheon at La Coupole restaurant. I’m having coffee there now. Reading the book. This book is for me!

William is 60 years old. Instead of feeling elated, he has ‘insomnia and malaise.’ He shocks his guests by declining to attend the celebratory lunch before realizing the impact of his decision, and reluctantly attends.

I have experience assisting people with depression, of various forms, so I was interested in William Styron’s open and honest effort to document the cause of his malaise, his attempts to deal with his dysfunctional daily life, his relationship with his wife Rose, and to identify the pivot point that changed his downward trajectory. It’s a short 84-page book, but cathartic for the author.

He begins with a definition of depression: ‘Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self – to the meditating intellect – as to verge close to being beyond description.’ He adds, ‘it is the chemical depletion of the chemicals norepinephrine and serotonin, and the increase of a hormone, cortisol … But never let it be doubted that depression, in its extreme form, is madness.’

William says he is an ‘incipient depressive’ with ‘the unipolar form’ which, he writes, led him ‘straight down’ to despair. He felt paralyzed and mystified about his inability to ‘snap out of it.’ He writes that the ‘failure of alleviation is one of the most distressing factors of the disorder … and one that helps situate it squarely in the category of grave diseases.’

He writes that ‘neither medications nor psychotherapy’ were able to stop his plunge toward the depth. His descent led to seven weeks in hospital, where he felt ‘sudden stabilization.’ He adds, ‘for me, the real healers were seclusion and time.’

Clinical depression has different symptoms and manifestations for everyone, from short bouts to prolonged periods, and with different ‘ways out of the downward spiral.’ It is much too complex in its causes, symptoms, and treatments to draw unilateral conclusions from a single individual – nevertheless, his writings may resonate with some readers.

I have distilled William’s detailed stages of depression, that he experienced, into a chronological order of manifestation (in his words):

One:           ‘insomnia and malaise’

Two:           ‘confusion, failure of mental focus and lapse of memory’

Three:        ‘lucidity of sorts in the early hours of the day, gathering murk in the afternoon and evening’

Four:          ‘panic and dislocation’

Five:           ‘my entire mind would be dominated by anarchic disconnections’

Six:            ‘near disappearance of my voice’

Seven:       ‘loss of libido’ and taste; ‘an abundance of dreams … exhaustion combined with sleeplessness’

Eight:         ‘diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely over-heated room’

Nine:          ‘a quality of physical pain … (that) had become so intense’

Ten:           ‘being alone in the house, even for a moment, causes exquisite panic and trepidation’

Eleven:      ‘all sense of hope had vanished.’

At the loss of hope, William entered hospital – ‘the pacifying effect that the hospital can create, its immediate value as a sanctuary where peace can return to the world’ had a healing effect for him. However, he was also supported with daily telephone calls from a friend who was ‘suffering similar experiences’ that made the difference in his recovery. And listening to music.

His ultimate turning point, he writes, was ‘hearing a passage from the Alto Rhapsody’ (1869), a symphony by Johannes Brahms. The lyrics are from a poem, Winter Journey in the Harz, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He was restored to ‘the capacity for serenity and joy, and this may be indemnity enough for having endured the despair beyond despair.’

Making my peace with a memoir of madness, I learned the following:

• Journaling helps to release feelings
• Journaling helps to reflect on thoughts and emotions
• Identifying patterns of reactions helps to identify triggers
• Finding ‘your’ soother helps to bring serenity
• The pivot point can come out of the blue, so expect the unexpected.

 

 

Martina Nicolls: Rainy Day Healing – MAKING MY PEACE