THE WELL (part 1)

The movie “The Ring,” without trying to, contains one of the most powerful symbolisms I have ever seen for my journey with depression/bipolar. The crux of the story revolves around a little girl that was pushed into a well to die and then comes back to kill people that watch a videotape. The scene that makes an impact with me is the actual scene where she is in the well.

Chapter 1. How Did I Get Here?

She is just standing there looking down. Suddenly someone / something comes up behind her and pushes her into the well. From there we see life through her eyes.
She is looking up the well shaft. It’s dark – it’s scary, but there is light above. She doesn’t know how she got there but, there is light and she knows help is somewhere near. She is scared, but feels her salvation is certain if she waits or can just climb out.
When we first find ourselves in the well we frequently don’t understand what happened. We just know we have fallen, or perhaps, like the girl, we feel like we were pushed. We may struggle to climb the walls, to free ourselves this pit. We may determine that we just need to read the Bible more and pray harder or that we just need to “pull our head out of the mud” and climb out.
Perhaps the well is shallow or the sides are not too steep and we can climb out on our own. All too often, our plight is like the little girl. We scrape and claw the walls trying to climb out but it is too deep and the walls are too slippery. Like the girl we end up leaving bloody gouges in the walls, along with parts of our fingernails, but we are no closer to escaping. We are not only still in the well, we have now injured ourselves and come to the reality we lack the ability to climb out on our own.
We all go through depressions in varying degrees over and over in our lives. The depression may be as simple as the loss of a beloved hermit crab or as deep and crushing as the death of a child. This episodic depression tends to come and go and can be traced back to a cause. As Bob Geldof, the organizer of Live Aid and Live 8 describes it: “[I]f somebody dies, if something happens to you, there is a normal process of depression, it is part of being human, and some people view it as a learning experience.” I am not going to try here to define every depression or try to describe every well. Every well, as with every person, is different.
The depression I am speaking about is like the girl in the well.
She did not know what happened. All she knew for sure was that she was at the bottom of a well. She looked around and there were no answers to her questions of how and why she was there. For some, like the girl, the fall was quick and sudden and for others it involved a longer process or may, indeed, be completely lost in “the fog of the time.”
This first stage of depression is that time when we have first found ourselves in the well. We may not know how we got there, what to do about it or even how long we have been there.
This stage may only last a day or two or may drag on for years. I was there for many years; in fact, I don’t recall a time in my life when I was not there.
In my case I don’t remember falling into the well. It is like I grew up in the well. My well, as I suspect is the case with many others, seems to have a series of hidden ledges. I fall down a ledge on one day and perhaps manage to climb up to another on a different day but I can’t ever reach the top and climb out.
A well may be a slimy mud hole that seems to grab and suck you in like quicksand or I dry pit that just sucks the life out of you, or anywhere in between.
Mine is a smooth dry pit. There are few, if any points of contact and features. It is like looking at the inside of the cardboard tubes they wrap birthday paper around. This dryness sucks all the energy out of me and leaves me as barren and featureless as the walls of the well. This barren hole has, at least in my mind’s eye, shaped and directed who I am and what I feel. I tend to hold in my emotions around others and try to only release them under “controlled” circumstances. Unfortunately, I end up with so much pressure behind the valve so when I open it I have a hard time controlling the flow - - the proverbial trying to drink from a fire-hose.
Another effect of this is that my emotions tend to jam up behind the valve and when I release them they come out all jumbled. I try to be happy but the tears are there as well. I want to relax at a party with friends and tell a joke. But the jokes come out weird or improper for the circumstances. I try so hard to be happy or to at least appear happy that I end up looking the fool instead. Even worse, I say and do things that tarnish my witness and/or embarrass my family and myself.
Then the drop-off happens. I will be doing something that should be fun and then it’s like a switch turns inside me and the fear and depression flood in.
I become afraid that I am acting like an ass or that the people I am with don’t really want me there or secretly dislike me and have only invited me because I come with the kids and my wife. I feel like the piece of candy in the box that no one wants but comes with the box of candy regardless and must be tolerated until you can politely get rid of it.
These are some of my most frustrating moments - the times that others think should be the best ones. These are the days where I had managed to climb most of the way out of the well to where as I look up the upper branches and leaves of a tree are just visible and I can just make out the sounds of distant joy. I look and listen and rejoice.
But then reality hits. That’s only the top of the tree. The tree itself is blocked by the well. The mighty trunk, the squirrels playing, the bird nests, perhaps a picnic in the grass or a child’s swing in the branches, these are all hidden from me.
In a panic I try to climb out. I get excited and try to manufacture the joy I hear and sense outside the well in myself. I talk a lot, try to joke and be friendly to get others to notice me and in so doing to somehow pull me out.
Ultimately, it is like teaching a computer to be happy or say “I love you.”
You can program in the happiest music and the funniest jokes – you can even put in a MP3 of someone saying “I love you.” The computer will play this back to you and, as Hollywood has demonstrated, can make it seem very real. It is all in illusion, a computer can’t love and happy music can be the saddest sound on earth to an empty soul. It is an illusion that we hope will fool ourselves and help us not see where we are and that we use to fool others into thinking we are OK. We aren’t depressed, we don’t have a mental illness, we are the good people. If they know what is wrong they will despise me and keep the kids away and talk about me behind my back or pity me. (did I mention I HATE to feel pitied). I have to pretend I am not in the well. I have to be “normal.”[1]
To me this is that first stage of depression, when you know there is joy of life out there and that you are entitled to some it but you just can’t seem to climb out of the well to grasp it.
[1] I remember reading once and I can’t remember who asked it first, though I think it may have been George Carlin, “do you think more than half the people in the world are nuts? If so than being nuts is normal, thus, I am normal.”