To Know the Darkness and the Light (on depression and the death of Robin Williams)

[WilliamPitt]

Robin Williams, during a tour of 30 cities, backstage before his performance at the Ted Constant
Convocation Center in Norfolk, Va., Oct. 26, 2009. (Photo: Jay Paul / The New York Times)

To Know the Darkness and the Light
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed

Friday 15 August 2014

Ye must welcome the phantoms that scream through the night
Take heed to the visions and presences bright
Lest ye waste up your life with the weight of street
In fear of the banshees ye'd happen to meet...

- "Jo'rneyman's Song," Barleyjuice

I know about the darkness. I have seen it, smelled it, tasted it. I have felt it invade me through my pores, had it envelop and encompass every river and sea and valley of me. I have been staggered as it conquers and pillages me, I have choked on the soot of its burning, and I have wept tears of ash as the hoofbeats of its raiders tear my soil and thunder up the road to batter down my gates.

There is that. There is also this:

The wind in the trees. The sun on my skin. The taste of rain. The morning light dappling the ripples on the pond. The swell and crescendo of music. The caress of a lover. The coo of a child. A long embrace. A turn of phrase, a rhyme of verse, a finely-told joke. The taste of chocolate, or whiskey, or wine. The way wildflowers look in Spring, and the leaves in Autumn, the low susurration of snow in Winter, and the cobalt blue aftermath of sunset on Summer nights.

All of these, and so much more, and everything, are electric to me. For as long as I have had memory, the world around me and within me has left me gasping in a way that beggars the word "overwhelmed." I am in a state of perpetual astonishment, because I am wired that way. I came into this world a human tuning fork, humming with the tones surrounding me entirely against my will. I cannot stop it, and would not if given the chance. Mine is wonder, and awe, and I am overtaken by it, as if the air itself is transformed into high waves breaking on the beach. I drown daily, hourly, in minutes and in seconds, I drown in moments, and smile as I sink, because it is beautiful beyond words and space and time.

There is, however, a price. That price is the darkness, bleak and cold and forbidding, and I must make room for it as I also make room for the astonishment, because it comes relentless, remorseless, and it will have its way. When it comes to hold court - and it always comes, and always will - I cling to what is simple and good in this incredibly strange life I have been gifted to live. I hold tight the basics - my wife, my daughter, my family, my friends - and furiously remember that this, too, shall pass. It always does, I tell myself.

It always has, so far.

Such is the bewilderment of bi-polar depression. It is both reaper and reaver, a joyful destroyer, a Technicolor wrecking ball. With one supple hand it gives you the whole wide world that thrums against every nerve and fiber of your being, the world like diamonds dropped on a gilded plate. The other hand is a taloned fist, crusted with old blisters and older blood, and that hand takes. And takes. And takes.

Balance is all. You come to see your life as a long sine wave, all valleys and peaks, which are to be ridden out. Chronic depression has a dreadful way of transforming you into a demented walking contradiction, a deeply empathetic narcissist, at once all-embracing and self-absorbed. You are a thunderstorm, beautiful and terrible, bringing rain to cleanse and restore along with wind and lightning to destroy and scorch. You ride it out. You tame yourself. You learn. You endure.

Most of the time.

(snip)

Depression is a thief that steals your ability to see the ground under your feet for what it is. You find yourself, instead, lost in a contradictory autobiography, a self-created narrative drafted by demons in a hall of mirrors where all the glass is cracked. It is all too easy to get lost in there, and Robin Williams, like so very many others before him, could not find his way out.

I see the ground under my feet. I know it for what it is. I lose it sometimes, but after many hard years, I know full well how to find it. I have put my malady in the traces, and it plows my fields with a durable reliability I will never not find surprising. When I hear the raiders coming, I brace the gates, and bring the provisions inside the walls, and prevail.

But I know the darkness, and I damn it with curses unspeakable, because it steals people like Robin Williams every day. Even in my wroth, however, I am forced to bless it as well, because it is Janus of two faces, and the other face of the darkness is that great, good, glorious light. It shined so brightly out of Mr. Williams, and out of so many others who bear this burden. It is the price, implacable, utterly immutable. It is what it is.

If you share this with me, you are my brother, my sister, the wind on my skin. You are not alone. Reach for the light, always. It is there. I know. I've seen.

The rest: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/25564-william-rivers-pitt-to-know-the-darkness-and-the-light

[ellaydubya]

1. Beautiful and Poignant

Hello, Brother! Thank you.

[annabanana]

2. God, Will.

Never have I read a more exposing description of the life within that world. Bless you for penning it. The world should know and try to understand all iterations of the human spirit.

[In_The_Wind]

3. Thank you.

[jeff47]

4. Excellent post....but I have a nitpick

From what's been released, it appears he had depression instead of bipolar.

Those of us who have "only" depression don't have the sine wave you describe. When we're in the darkness, there is no light coming.

A "normal" person has a sine-wave-like life of ups and downs. A bipolar person has the same thing, but the amplitude of the wave is much higher. A person with depression takes the "normal" person's wave and moves it down.

On the one hand, knowing that it will not get better on it's own is not helpful. On the other hand, knowing that you'll remain "normal" for quite a long time once it gets better is helpful.

[magical thyme]

5. and there is this: he now also had a progressive, terminal disease

that would rob him of his innate and cultivated ability to ride out the waves of bi-polar or ease the pain of depression with his humor.

We don't know whether he suffered simple depression or was bi-polar. In the end it didn't matter.

There may have been an end in sight from the suffering of depression, but not for the Parkinson's.

And I hate to bring this up, but Will is still young. It doesn't get easier as you get older. It gets harder. Eventually you just get tired of it all. You're closer to the end anyway.

[WilliamPitt]

6. The other insidious aspect of Parkinson's

is the fact that it robs your dopamine levels, which tends to bring on the depression well before the actual symptoms occur. Evil.

But still depression, by any other name.

[saidsimplesimon]

7. thank you Mr. Pitt, one of your best articles, imho

[WilliamPitt]

8. Kick

[Crewleader]

9. Thank You William

[SammyWinstonJack]

10. rec!

[Skittles]

11. "I have bad days when I feel bad, and good days when I feel nothing"

that's depression

[annabanana]

12. plenty of recs, not enough kicks. . . . . . . n/t

[markpkessinger]

13. What an exquisitely beautiful reflection. . .

. . . Thank you, Will. I have long admired your writing, but this is just stunning.

[WilliamPitt]

14. Saturday evening kick

Last one.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

15. You are an amazing writer, my dear Will...

Your words take my breath away...

More this time than normally, but they always leave me breathless.

We are gifted by your enormous ability with words, and I thank you so much for them.

K&R