doldrums |ˈdōldrəmz; ˈdäl-; ˈdôl-|
plural noun (the doldrums)
low spirits; a feeling of boredom or depression:
color catalogs will rid you of February doldrums.I have mused quite often on my blog, since its inception on June 20, 2004 (yes, it did turn five while I was away from home), about depression and low emotional or mental moments in my life.
No one I know - I would even dare venture no human being - can boast never having found him/herself in the doldrums at multiple times in his/her lifetime. Some people, though, experience those doldrums in a fashion that is way more acute than others. I am pretty sure that I am one of them.
It is easy to fictionalize one's life. In fact, I truly believe that, the minute we relate - either orally or in writing - any event that has happened to us, we immediately create a fiction. So, I am certain that, in reminiscing here about the moments or periods of deep despondency or depression in my life, I will probably over-dramatize what really happened. Yet, I am not taking any of this in jest, and do not want you to take it in jest either, because none of it was funny.
I do not recall my childhood being particularly unhappy. I had a very nice companion, playmate, and confident in my brother, François-Xavier. Sure, we did have arguments once in a while, but we would always make up really quickly and could always turn the page and let bygones be bygones. However, there was something a bit troubling with my parents. By the time I was old enough to be conscious of what was going on around me, I realized that my father always had some sort of a health issue (mostly with his back), and that he has a rather short fuse. I was also slightly afraid of my mother whose special way of "punishing" my brother and me was to give us the "silent treatment." My mother was also always highly suspicious of my school friends, and would submit me to a thorough questioning about the family of anyone of them who would want to invite me at her house. This became so troublesome to me that I began to routinely decline friends' invitations to go and play at their houses.*
Although it had its moments of fairly intense happiness, I would not qualify life in the household in which I grew up as "happy" (remember, though, that I wrote above that I would not describe my childhood as "unhappy" either.) Another factor that contributed to this was that, after my father sold his tombstone making business, he got into a very deep blue funk (in the aftermath of a herniated disk surgery in which he nearly died, his surgeon had told him to give up that business, because he might get severely hurt lifting something heavy - it is beyond me why my father actually obeyed this idiot's orders!). My parents then made the decision of buying a café located on the main square of a little town, some 20 miles from where we lived. They stayed there for about three years and, during at least the first one of those years, my father did nothing but just sat around and moped. My mother kept the business going, pretty much alone.
This was my first introduction to depression, but I didn't know what it was at the time, and I was not truly aware that my father was having some sort of nervous breakdown. What I know, though, is that he was never exactly a stable person for the rest of his life. As I have written it many times here, he was what I would deem a depressive hypochondriac.
My father learned how to cook (something he has always enjoyed as a hobby), and became a chef. My mother never let him get his own restaurant, but they bought a store where they sold poultry (on weekends and through Wednesday or so) and fish (on Thursday and Friday) and prepared food that my father would make. He also ran a catering business. He also worked as the chef of a large hospital in Lille for close to ten years (where he acquired the reputation of being a very difficult person to deal with, things went sour when the administration changed, and he quit in a huff - he would probably have been fired if he had not quit.) Things were OK for a while, except that my parents always cried poor mouth and always seemed to be in financial straits. In 1968, overwhelmed by the tough competition of local supermarkets, which had just began to strive, they sold their business. The guy who bought it went bankrupt, he and his wife left town in the dead of night, and they never paid their debt to my parents, who were devastated. More doldrums ensued.
In the meantime, I turned into a teenager, and that's when I started experiencing what I think were panic attacks - even though I did not know what they were at the time. All I know is that I would be in class and, all of a sudden, I would feel extremely uncomfortable, and feeling like I would pass out (I had fainting spells when I was in my teens, and I think that it contributed to the onset of those panic attacks.) Still, that was not enough to drive me to depression. I had never been a truly stellar student, but I excelled during my last year of secondary school, and passed my Baccalauréat with mention "Bien." As a result, my father saw to it that I got admitted to the
classes préparatoires aux Grandes Ecoles. And this is where I was to enter the Great Depression.
My first year of
prépa was fine, but I derailed majorly, basically at the onset of year two. I started a relationship with a guy (one of my brother's classmates) who was a really unhappy soul - his dream was to sail the world, and engineering school was not his thing. I wonder what happened to him, and if he ever achieved his dream. I think that he got his engineering degree, though. What made things difficult with that relationship is (beyond this guy being a real pessimist) that we kept it basically sexless (lots of making out, but never the "real deal"), which was a huge stress in itself. I just knew that I couldn't be sexually active, because my mother would find out and kill me (and, besides, I didn't know how to gain discreet access to contraception.) At school, things got highly competitive, and that made me despondent to no end, so I started cutting classes and spending endless hours at the local café, drinking coffee or beer (depending on the hour), and smoking cigarettes. The more I cut classes, the deeper in trouble I got, but when I went to class, I kept on having those blasted panic attacks. By the end of the year, I was a shadow of myself, and passed only two out of four "unités de valeur" for which I was supposed to get some sort of equivalency from the University of Lille (in other words, no "Grandes Ecoles" for me, ever, and I had to repeat my second year of university studies.)
In June, 1972, I broke up with the boyfriend. By the end of the summer of 1972, I had severed all ties with the friends that I had made in
prépa (we had worked in the same summer camp in my hometown. Things had not gone well at all, because I was basically totally off-kilter. We were not in good terms by the time that summer was over.) I still regret having lost track of four girls who had, actually, been my good friends in
prépa. Depressed and lost, I decided that I would go to the U.S.A. for a year. My parents were never really aware of how low I was - they were too wrapped up in their own concerns which were, as usual, either related to their finances or to my father physical and mental health (and to his lack of job stability.)
My year in the U.S. was fine. I remember having only one panic attack when I was there, and I have no clue what had triggered it. It was during my two-month stay in Boston. I had one huge case of agoraphobia when I had gone to Paris with my mother to deal with the obtention of my U.S. visa, and my mother just belittled me and yelled at me, telling me that this was happening because I was scared shitless of going to the U.S. for a year. Moral support is not exactly what I was ever able to get from her.
During that year, I met Rick, and we decided to get married in August 1975. I did experience more panic attacks around the time of my wedding (I guess that I do not fare well at the prospect of huge life changes), but never let anyone know. Then, for the first two years or so after I had moved permanently to the U.S., I became severely agoraphobic, but continued to live normally - I never told about this to anyone (except that I once had a complete physical that ruled out any kind of physical problem related to those panic symptoms), but was utterly miserable. Little by little, the agoraphobia subsided, except that I realized, around 1977 or so, that I experienced severe panick attacks when driving a car. Again, I managed to get to the point where I could drive on secondary roads fairly comfortably, but never drove on highways - this was way beyond my capability. One more reason to be depressed about something.
Our married life was good. Rick and I were close, good friends, did everything together, and enjoyed a lot of the same leisure time activities. I carved out for myself some sort of professional life. Making the decision to have a child was a tad tricky, for reasons that I cannot get into here, but it was made nevertheless, and Claire was born on September 12, 1986. I had a great pregnancy, and there was no post-partum depression for me.
Things took a very different turn after we moved to Pittsburgh. Rick had finished a Ph.D. in applied linguistics at the University of Delaware, and, at first, accepted a job at Loyola College in Baltimore, for which he had turned out a more prestigious position at the University of Pittsburgh. He realized right away that he hated Loyola and, when Pitt asked him if he would reapply for the same job (which they had not filled) that he had turned down, he said yes. Lo and behold, he was re-offered the job in the spring of 1989, and we moved to the 'Burgh in August of that year.
Soon after we had moved to Pittsburgh, Rick turned into a workoholic - he felt the huge pressure of pursuing tenure at a Research III institution. He worked long hours at the office, and was very distracted when at home. In the meantime, I tried to figure out what I would do with myself. Claire was only three years old. For a whole year, I worked as a free-lance translator, something that I hated doing and that didn't pay that well. In the end, I applied for a Ph.D. program in French literature at Pitt, to which I was admitted with no problem (Rick refused adamantly to let me get a teaching certificate in his department at Pitt, so that was the only option with which I was able to come up.) In June of 1990, I took that dreadful trip to France by myself with Claire - not only were Claire and I treated like shit by my parents during the entire time but, by the time we returned to Pittsburgh, I knew that something was really amiss with Rick. He was just no longer the same person.
I cannot get into the details of what had happened to him, but that did affect our marriage very deeply for the next seven or eight years - it basically started to unravel big time. Rick was not home a whole lot and, when he was, he was always at his computer (allegedly working.) I basically got myself through graduate school (I excelled) while taking care of Claire close to 24/7. I went to France alone for a week when my father was dying in late January, 1993, and again in the summer of 1995. I returned again in the summer of 1998, if I am not mistaken. Those are the only times, really, when Rick cared for Claire alone. Of course, whenever I had to meet a deadline for graduate school, he would take care of Claire, but often reluctantly. Our relationship was exclusively based on dealing with essential household logistics. And things were not good, as he had got himself into the habit of charging substantial amounts of money (basically to buy clothes and to travel to conferences) to an American Express card that needed to be paid off every month. I kept answering nasty calls from our other credit cards companies, whose bills I juggled the best I could (the only thing that ever mattered to Rick is that that Amex card bill was paid monthly.) Soon, I managed to drag him to a Credit Counseling agency through which we consolidated, reduced, and finally paid off all of that debt.
My father's death crowned a period of despondency in which I had sunk since the summer of 1990, and sent me into a downward spiral of what I now know was deep depression. I often considered suicide at that time (I knew how I would do it: I would lock myself up in our garage and start the car - this would have been absolutely possible, since, during the day, Rick was at the university, and Claire was in school.) However, I never acted upon those suicidal thoughts, because I just couldn't bring myself to do that to my daughter. These few years, between roughly February 1993 and the end of the summer 1996 were the worst ever in my entire life. However, I never let anyone know about how horrible my life was - not even the friends whom I had made in graduate school. And I never sought professional help.
After Rick and I finally had that seminal conversation (the entire tenor of which I still cannot reveal on this blog) during which we decided that we would separate the minute I would get a job from which I could derive a steady income, things got rough again for a bit (this conversation took place on March 31, 1997), due to a number of circumstances that I hope to be able to discuss here some day. To make sure that I would not sink again into depression, I started seeing a therapist - my sessions with her lasted from the spring of 1997 to December, 1998, when I accepted the job I now have and left Rick. I was never entirely candid with my therapist, but she was a very good woman who helped me quite a bit (although she would constantly try to convince me to leave Rick right away, which I couldn't afford to do financially.) I never took any kind of antidepressant, and have never done so in my entire life.
I have to say that I may have lapsed through bried periods of doldrums (typically when school starts again at the end of August), but I am now at a point in my life where I am and feel very happy. I still suffer from acute highway phobia, but I am getting very close to tackling this problem - the only last one that really haunts me - seriously (my goal is not really to get myself to be able to drive on interstate highways, but at least back to secondary roads, in areas that I do not know well.) So, yeah, all - or nearly all - is good right now in my life (well, I sometimes get a bit depressed about my lack of scholarly productivity, but I am determined to do something about that very soon as well.)
I find it interesting that, among those folks whom I have met through the blogosphere - many of whom are bloggers themselves, many admit to having suffered through more or less severe bouts of depression. Among those, most are women. Some have been or are taking medication for this depression. This is no funny business, but something that one should be able to be very candid about. A friend of mine here in this town was telling me yesterday how, a couple of years ago, the husband of one of her friends had shot himself in the chest (his wife and kids were in the house when he did this!). Nothing that horrific should ever happen to anyone, just because that person may have run out of hope and, thus, out of any kind of will to live.
Being in the doldrums is a normal human condition. Being plagued and severely immobilized by deep depression is not. If you are deeply depressed, do me a favor and talk to a friend or, better yet, to a doctor or a mental health professional.
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* The best example of my mother's behavior toward my friends and their families actually pertains to the ex-middle and high school friend whom I met in Paris last month. My mother had learned that this girl's father was the President of the Charles Trenet's fan club (Charles Trenet was a very famous French singer/songwriter.) Charles Trenet happened to be a notorious homosexual who was also an alleged pedophile. Because of that, my mother told me that I could no longer have any contact with this friend.
Photos:
1. Photos taken when I was probably two years old. For some reason, I seem to be experiencing some sort of major meltdown. I guess that two-year olds get depressed too, sometimes!
2. Photo taken at Rick's sister's wedding, which was, if I recall it properly, in the spring of 1976. Even though I look fairly happy, this was one of the most miserable time of my life, during which I experienced frequent panic attacks. Oh, and that Dorothy Hamill do must have contributed to my depressive state. Interestingly, some of my mother-in-law's relatives commented on the fact that I was quite good-looking, adding that they thought that Rick would have married someone "plain." Assholes!Labels: depression, despondency, Doldrums
Today is the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first set foot on what we thought, then, was a very distant planet... We all remember Armstrong's first words upon setting foot on the moon's surface - "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Michael Collins stayed in the Apollo 11 capsule, which earned him, in some French circles, the nickname of "Poulidor de l'espace." [Raymond Poulidor was a great French bike racer who constantly finished second in great races, especially the Tour de France.]
