Depression: Chapter 1 Happiness in a box

Drowning sorrow

***

I float between the islands of success and failure.

And at the same time, I'm drowning.

Chapter 1 Happiness in a box

It was Christmas Eve and I was in the last minutes shopping.

A watch here, a shirt there.

Shopping Centre was packed out. Everyone is out hunting for Christmas gifts

in the last minute. One only wonders, why people behave

this way? Is that what Christmas is all about in the end? Hunting Lifeless

items that no one really needs.

A second trimmer perhaps?

A pair of polyester teddy bears?

I went up the escalators to shop for last gifts.

Suddenly, the escalator and a silence became clear.

This is the only time, that you will notice that escalators actually make sounds.

When the escalator stopped moving, people started to move,

everyone except me. I just stood there, I was stuck there,

in the middle of the escalator. People brushed past

me and I can't move.

It is something that happens to me every now and then, I fall ....

God, I wish I was aborted!

Most unfortunate people have morbid fantasies of his death.

The way you want to die and the reasons for it, usually contemplates one's views on

life.

But it's not enough to describe my miserable life.

I wish I had never been born.

I wish my parents had never met.

I wish they instead met with others to have children with.

What if my miserable "me" would have spread instead.

"Am I crazy?" I ask, looking at my shrink.

"What do you think is wrong?" She asks me.

Once again, she answers a question with a question.

This is almost all she ever does,

a question for a question. It drives me crazy.

If I say something like, "I do not want to let people will think I'm weak,"

She would respond in a kind and annoying way,

"Well, what do you consider weak?"

What does it mean to be strong?

I'm starting to realize that her ability as my savior is

doomed to make me angry.

This is my life and it will end a therapy session in

time.

I get the urge to call her Astrid, because she

looks like the sweet old lady Astrid

Lindgren after all, with its solid smile and clever sense of

humor. But I'm not her Pippi Longstocking, far

from it actually.

Astrid, , my shrinking shrink,

is a nice little old lady with a gentle voice.

It's like she does her best not to hurt

people when she speaks. Very careful, as I mentioned.

No judicial or suggestive statements, nothing that could upset me.

Everything is very professional, she raises deep questions,

but reveals nothing about her own values.

Psychologists are really a different breed of people.

It itches under arms. But I do nothing to

matter. It's like having hidden aces during a poker game.

"If people only knew,"

Under my sleeves there are several secret patches hiding.

and under the patches...

Thus, it began so innocently.

But, we'll get to that later.

I can not tell you about it for now.

Right now I have to continue pretending.

I am afraid to tell things for my psychologist.

I fear that if Astrid would open up my skull, bats would fly

out it.

I'm starting to think about how I got into this

situation. I'm thinking about what mistakes I have done

to deserve such an unspeakable misery of a life.

But I will not submit to anything, instead I start to

think about something completely irrelevant, like the time,

when I was in town with my friends a few weeks ago.

This is how my brain works, I fly away.

We visited a small restaurant. We sat in a row

in front of a cross-eyed bartender who asked us if we wanted

Order more drinks.

We could not see who he was looking at. He seemed to

look at all of us. So we looked at each other and back at him.

"Four beers please," I said.

He did not flinch and said,

"Okay".

I won, it was me he was looking at.

Money can not buy this kind of happiness.

It's like "coffee and a smoke" during a break at a misserable job at a grocery store

The actual price is a bargain and it does not last long, but the

satisfaction can not be boxed and marketed.

Imagine if you could however.

"I'l take a box of happiness, too."

The bartender stared, probably me (a secret

he will take to the grave.

He put four beers before us.

At the end of the bar there was this stage, and on it, stood a worn

middle-aged woman with curly black hair. She sang in

French. I did not understand the words, but there was no

gloomily in her eyes and voice. It wasn't some nice love ballad,

it was all about pain, every word she was singing was like the tears of death,

from something that was on the brink below.

"lost love," I thought.

She probably wondered what she had done to deserve such a

terrible fate. I assumed it was an old Edith Piaf song.

My friends drank their beer and talked. They did

sarcastic remarks about the singer's ability to maintain a

pure tone and polluted the air with their opinions. I got

desire to question them on what qualifications they felt

justify to comment on anyone's singing ability.

I however, sat silently, looking down at my glass and ended up in

same gloom as the singer.

"I check out any day now" I thought incredulously.

About an hour later we went our separate ways. I

wobbled home through empty streets of Stockholm. I saw

a few trees here and there, but most recalled

desiccated twigs. This was not a forest, this was the city with a few

miserable trees that didn't belong. This was a concrete jungle after all.

Everywhere I turned my eyes, it would be negative observations

about the world I lived in.

It was not always like this,

I was actually a pretty happy guy

once upon a time. (what happened? You might ask.)

If only there was something to do, to not feel

this way. I would go home and become a creature

of sleep just like everyone other member of the Homo Patheticus.

I would like to be the guy who

falls in love,

gets married,

puts himself into debt

and becomes a lousy parent.

I would like to be a cancer patient who has two

weeks left of his miserable life.

But no,

when I get home, I become what I have been in recent years,

a tragically self-destructive creature wishing that the misery

called life would eventually end.

I live in a suburb to Stockholm, called Botkyrka.

this is where all the low-income groups live.

There is no prestige where I lives.

Welcome to the concrete jungle.

When you go up against Botkyrka there is a sign of E4,

where it says "Far from ordinary"

Not everyone understands that sentence, not in the same way as we

suburbans understand it.

During the day concrete is visible as far as the eye can see.

All the buildings are identical, even people who live here,

can sometimes get lost. It is like a gray theme here,

even the houses that have other colors have

a grayish splash in them. When winter is ending and

gray string gains remains, it can be really depressing.

But there is a way out, the subway.

Unfortunately, I was on the way back from the subway.

Outside my building there is usually some junkie standing, smoking pot or whatever.

Almost every time I would see the same show,

they see me and quickly hide what they do.

As if I do not know.

I wonder if they are happier than me,

I guess they must be.

But this night the junkies were not there.

I saw, however, a rat run by and under the element.

It happened so quickly that I wonder if I actually saw it.

I tried to ignore it, but inside, I was boiling with anger, that I had to

live here.

I get home and my dodgy excuse for a father

sits and doughs in front of a TV. He does not work, he is

prematurely retired. He spends half the day in front of a

Television and the rest with some blonde younger girlfriend.

He asks me if I had a good time, I nod but think "no, not really."

He isn't always this pleasant. Usually he is pissed because I do not study.

He whines and kindly explains to me, that I am throwing my life away.

Usually I say nothing, but sometimes I am on the edge, fed up, and say:

"YOU ARE TO TALK, YOU FUCKING LOOSER,

WHAT THE HECK HAVE YOU EVER ACCOMPLISHED WITH YOUR LIFE??"

I have been in therapy for over a year. In that time,

I took a pill called Remeron every night before I go to bed.

The is an antidepressant tablet packaged in a pressure-sensitive

map pack. I have to pick out the tablet with dry fingers and I put

it on my tongue where it slowly dissolves.

The taste is actually initially acidic and sweet, in case anyone is wondering.

But then the taste a bit metallic and mouth feels numb.

Then it goes through, down the slimy throat of a former smoker.

Eventually it reaches my stomach where the hypersensitive pill

melts into even smaller particles. What's happening thereafter is a mystery to me,

ask a doctor, I have no idea. I only know that the content then reaches my depressed brain.

You see, there is a chemical imbalance. Neurons in the brain

communicate with each other through various chemical

substances.

Depression occurs when the normal supply of these substances are reduced.

Antidepressant medications can restore deficiencies and provide a normal feature of

brain. That is what the brochure says anyway.

Should I trust this information? I am desperate,

it is either this solution or a streamlined shotgun.

But I'm desperate and without hunting license.

I'll do anything.

But it was not always like this.

I was happy as a child.I think it at least.

The brain has a strange ability to paint the gaps in long-term memory.

I seem to have erased the bad memories.

But lets say that I was happy.

"Okay" says Astrid.

I was a regular guy with many friends and even more toys.

I had a habit of chewing on my toys. Especially rubber Smurfs.

I could chew them until they became unrecognizable.

I guess you could say I was a "biter".

Rubber Smurfs, pencils, nails, whatever.

My childhood was at its height in the late 80's.

This was the time when most people had cable TV and could

enjoy MTV. It was during the time, when the anti-goddess Madonna

shocked the world with her daring pop clothes, a sex image

that older people hated with a intensity that crushed all opposition.

Pop icon Michael Jackson was still a magical show that most children both loved and were

terrified of. I remember I had an outbreak every time MTV showed his Thriller video.

But when he danced, I became hypnotized. I had never seen anything like this before.

I was after all a child. It is ironic and sad, most children became afraid of him, and were often reassured by their parents, that he would not hurt them,

One considers now, that perhaps the children were right to be a afraid of him.

More and more children played video games. There were no kids, who didn't know the Super Mario bros.

it was about hunting mushrooms and overcome obstacles like little demons,

which seemed harmless.

Movie World's highlights came naturally from

Hollywood. 80's movie world, when the effects began to be well, we were amazed by films

such as Aliens, Die Hard 1 and Silence of the Lambs. Tom Cruise was the cocky actor who

always managed to make the top movies, and we laughed when Maculin Culkin teased by burglars in Home Alone, and Jean-Claude Van Damme, so he simply kicked ass.

There was a time when I still believed in magic all its forms.

Christmas Eve was not just a red day, it was a day when we got gifts that created true

joy.

Children are born, being hyperactive dopamine volcanoes.

As a child, you're automatically set on happiness, you see nothing but happiness.

That is why everyone can recall wonderful snowy winters and eternal summers of childhood.

Friendship was never a problem. My trick was to I could make anyone laugh.

I discovered this ability one day when I hit my little toe outside the summer house,

and my best friend Peter could not stop laughing.

Peter always had a bit wicked sense of humor.

The girls who picked flowers outside a birch saw that he laughed,

they too, began to laugh.

I lifted my foot and started spinning like a tornado to get the pain to disappear. But it led

Just make sure that they laughed more at me.

Why are you laughing?

* Spin *

I have horrible actually. "

* Spin *

They laughed.

"It's actually not funny."

* Spin *

They laughed even more then.

The garden teacher ran out and I told her what had happened.

Unfortunately, I could not stop spinning.

"Tell them to stop!"

* Spin *

She tried to keep a straight face, but a smile found eventually came through.

Everyone laughed at me that day. I was disappointed, but was nevertheless

pleased with how the little toe can be so many feel good.

I became obsessed with getting people to like me, so I literally ran into walls to get

attention.

I also had an ability to get people to do

things. When I was five years, I picked up a red ant from the sandbox,

I killed it, I stuffed it into his mouth. Since I chewed it to death.

That said, I was a biter.

(An ant tastes as well salted caviar, in case anyone is wondering.)

It was a challenge, I got my friend Daniel to try it,

the other children only stared with curious eyes.

Daniel was looking for an ant in the sandbox, picked up one that appealed to

him and stuffed it into his mouth. He tried to chew,

but suddenly he began to howl and cry. A lady came

and Daniel started to rat me out! I got yelled at because Daniel got bit in the tongue by a ant.

But that did not stop me. I continued to nibble on my ants behind a toy cottage farm.

I saw no reason to stop. My mother however, she saw me sitting in the sand and put ants

in the mouth, she made me stop.

The only person I was afraid of was my own mother.

I was the result of a failed relationship.

I kept spending time with my parents, always in different rooms, they are

can not stand each other. It is thus not surprising why they parted.

But it's deeper than that. I have not spent much time analyzing why their

marriage did not work. I do not because I hear it constantly, from both of them.

I always hear the two versions.

Both my mother and my father grew up in a divided Poland.

A raped country during World War II, the Germany from the front, and by Russia from behind.

My mother grew up with acting ambitions, her dream theater. She loved being on stage, it was

her favorite place in the world. She was in the movies, plays and all her friends in the theater are the big names in contemporary Polish film world.

My father, however, followed in his father's footsteps, he became civil engineer in construction. It was a tough road, but such as promised high status. Unfortunately, he never liked it. I think he wanted to be an engineer primarily for that he thought it would please his father.

Eventually, waving a butterfly wing, and the effect was that my parents fell in love.

My mother was constantly ill and weak, so she dropped out of theater,

my father never got on with the building, so he quit his career.

My hopeless defectors for parents married and opened a restaurant in downtown Warsaw.

The city where I eventually was born, December, 1981.

The night that I was born, transformed Poland into a

Europe's hidden war field, the Cold War (the communists vs. the world).

I am usually told the story how tanks outside

the hospital would roll past at the same minute I arrived.

Poland became a communist nation against its will.

And absolutely nobody in the rest of the world knew about it.

All communication was either locked or manipulated.

There were not much going to do about it.

But my uncle was trying, he revealed censorship

by copying the secret government documents.

But it was not long until the government found out about

him. He was persecuted, and so were my parents

and grandparents. Our phones were tapped, all

our actions are recorded!

My uncle managed to escape to Sweden, and

hunger striked outside the Polish embassy to obtain

visas for the whole family and eventually we came to

Sweden.

Immigrants, like so many other families.

Sweden was at that time as a country where there were

opportunities to live a good life. Everything would work itself out,

but it things were not good between my parents. My father

drank and was unfaithful to my mother (according to her).

My father however told me that it was my mother who was not the

best wife. I honestly do not know what the real the truth is.

My uncle, my grandparents and grandparents based his version on the person they were

loyal to. So the truth never came to the surface,

at least not for me.

During my first year I was a bit loud and chubby

baby who could not stop eating. Most photos from

my baby-photo-scrapbook, you can see how I was chewing on everything around

me, candy, toys, sugar and some more toys. I

had blond baby hairs, the color was changed during the year

slowly to a dark chestnut brown color.

My hair has always also been thick and curly. Admirable forsome,

but for me it was just a hell to comb every morning.

Dad had gone one day when I was four. I

remember that day. He packed up and started yelling at mymother.

The yelled at each other with everything they had.

Of course the memory is a bit blurry, my father claims that she

fought and he tried to protect himself,

my mother, however, remember clearly that it was he who hit her.

The only thing I remember with detail and clarity is that when he grabbed

her arms, I yelled:

"Stop!"

But he did not react to me. So I took up my

Zorro-inspired plastic sword and struck his arm with all that I had.

Before I could react, he suddenly grabbed the sword and broke it into two pieces.

My mother sat on the floor and cried, I hugged her and couldn't stop crying.

My father looked at us and realized what he had done.

He walked away and it was the last day we were a family.

My father was not a bad man, but lightning struck

when he and my mother was in the same room. My psychologist smiles,

and acknowledges the symbolism of the story.

That when sword broke in two pieces so the same thing happened with family.

"Who cares?" Do I think.

I never got the sword or the family back again.

After that it was just me and my mother.

My grandparents lived nearby and every Sunday.

We met and had dinner.

But my mother scared me throughout my childhood. She

both hit and yelled at me. Her Polish background was about parents

abusing their children when they done something wrong.

It was not her fault, she was brought up that way.

I'm not saying I am for child abuse.

I don't believe that children can be educated in a certain age,

especially not with violence.

But there is a flip side of the coin.

In Sweden we do not believe the assault as a way of molding children.

And it has its consequences. I have repeatedly seen and heard how Swedish children

screaming "bitch" to their mothers.

I am however, merely pointing out that there is a clear disadvantage to not beat children.

After all, I never dared to say anything disrespectful

to mother, and look how fine I turned out (obvious irony).

But I got the rod constantly.

The sound of a well-placed slap was a natural sound to me.

Most of the time so I felt I deserved it.

But sometimes it was much worse.

I could keep on my mother's legs crying and screaming.

That being said, she scared me.

Children in kindergarten used to play a game,

they clapped their hands in front of your face,

if you blinked, it would mean that you were afraid of his mother.

I blinked every time. That said, my mother really scared me.

The first time I heard about the depression was in a

film, it was someone who was unhappy in love and claimed to be depressed.

I asked my mother what it meant.

She said it is when you are sad.

One day when I got stomach ache, so I told my mother that I was

depressed, she just laughed and explained that depression is when you are more sad than usual.

I tried to assure her that I was really more sorry now than ever.

She didn't reply, but I could see in her face that she knew what Depression really was,

but I was too young to understand it.

I'm pondering about depression when I look back to my childhood.

When was it?

Why did it come?

My best friend, or anyone had perhaps defined

depression as:

"Sadness, sluggishness, bored."

A literal correct definition is as follows:

"Morbid sadness, or being depressed is that

be depressed, sad, sad, depressed. "

My definition is more profound. I feel this phenomenon

as a period when I can not feel at all.

I can not experience either happiness or sadness.

Therefore I do not think the definition works particularly

well. I experience a feeling, an emptiness that can not be

described with common words.

I can only describe the feeling is so sharp that I will do anything to feel

different.

But I'll get to that later.

I started school with the family's high expectations. My

grandfather was a doctor and it was considered to be an amazing thing in

family. No one else had managed. And especially not my parents.

Polish children are always brought up to become doctors or lawyers.

It is all about prestige.

My grandfather was declared a genius in the family. He was

indeed a great man too. He always used to give me interesting books.

Medical Dictionaries and adventures like Robinson Crusoe.

He never pressured me to be doctor, but tried to inspire me.

My mother and grandmother However,

they wanted me to be. So it seemed

appropriate for me to say the words:

Okay, I'm going to be a doctor!