One day the alarm clock rings and you jump onto the bed crying with fear, but you don’t know why. Everything moves around you, as if the room were the cabin of a ship in the middle of the storm or as if it were alive. When you discover that the furniture around you, the light, the bed, are not what they should be, what you see every day, you realize that you have not woken up but that you are dreaming that you have woken up in the middle of a storm of terror. Not much later, when you really wake up because the alarm has gone off, you are crying with fear and you don’t know what, and you barely recognize the room where you sleep. That’s the time to go to the doctor.
I have followed with profound attention the information about the personal adventures of Alvaro Morata, that footballer who has been through that ordeal. He is young, he is handsome, he is surely rich, he has four children and he has enjoyed love almost until now, because the illness we are talking about – depression – the first thing that scares away is the people next to you and who said they loved you. . If it wasn’t true, they leave: no one wants to live with a patient who apparently has nothing wrong with them, who doesn’t hurt at all, doesn’t have a fever. Except that he is unable to open the bathroom door because he is afraid that they are waiting for him on the other side, or that he cries like a child because he has been trying to remember how to tie a shoelace for an hour.
Winston Churchill who suffered from it all his life, called it “the black dog.” That man of an extraordinarily strong and determined character he stayed sitting on the bedsometimes for whole days, unable to do anything but babble and moan, staring at a fixed point without seeing anything; the only one who knew how to get him out of that, how to scare the big dog, was Clemmy, his wife. And he knew it by intuition, by experience, by the years dedicated to taking care of him through the trial-error method, not because he had knowledge about an illness that, in Churchill’s time, did not even have a name.
I know her well. I know he leaves but he always comes back, no matter how long it takes. I know that there is no specific cause that makes it come, it could be many things. I know it sounds like madness (now they don’t say madness anymore), but that’s not it. I also know that It looks very similar to sadness and melancholy, but it doesn’t have much to do with them.. My father, for example, had every reason in the world to sink into blackness when Mom left, seven years ago and after more than six decades of mutual and sincere love, but it was not like that; the constant readings of Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and the slave’s “Manual” Epictetus They had their effect and, thanks to the Stoics of two thousand years ago, daddy endured – and endures – like a champion. He’s not suffering from depression, thank goodness.
Suddenly I found that I was telling lies to everyone; I was building around me an invented reality that only I saw and that required a terrible effort of imagination.
He visited me for the first time when I was 28. It didn’t last long, thanks to the help of a doctor who unfortunately has since died, but he has returned several more times. I’ve always tried to find out what attracts her, but the truth is that I haven’t succeeded. On one occasion I think it was the stress of work and an unfortunately long love affair, because it was sucking my blood and I refused to even think about it. But suddenly I found that I was telling lies to everyone; I was building around me an invented reality that only I saw and that required a terrible effort of imagination, like the “writer” of the novel by Vargas Llosa. The day that mental artifact collapsed on my head, it wasn’t that I went to the doctor; They took me away because I was unable to move on my own. I spent the morning half-dressed, sitting in bed, unable to decide whether to put the pants on starting from the left leg or from the right.
How do you remove it? Well, look, I don’t know for sure. Does willpower help to beat depression? Yes, of course it helps, but it is not enough. Furthermore, the black dog (I have always called it “The Black One”, before reading Churchill’s story) the first thing it destroys with its teeth is the will. You are left helpless. Do friends help? Gosh: it’s not that they help, it’s that they are essential. Friends of the good ones, the real ones, the ones who don’t indulge your nonsense, the ones who force you to do things, to go out, to walk, to write, to go to the movies, to take damn pills. Friends who really care about you.
That’s another one. The pills. Since the black dog visited me for the first time, four decades ago, until today, things have changed a lot. Many “antidepressant” drugs have appeared, almost as many as there are self-help manuals. I once read the most famous of all, More Plato and less Prozacfrom Canadian Lou Marinoff. He was very clever, but he didn’t tell me anything that I hadn’t already found out for myself. The most important thing is this: Drugs cure the symptoms of depression, yes, but they do not eliminate the cause that has brought it to your head. None. That’s impossible. And the worst thing is that many times, most of them, you don’t know what that cause is, if there is only one.
I trusted him until I realized that my friends, my co-workers, my family, were looking at me with a face that increasingly resembled horror. Finally someone told me: “Luisito, have you been drinking at home again? Or what are you taking?
I relied on drugs on occasion. The worst thing is that they take time to work (it takes about fifteen days until they start to take effect) and, above all, that the psychiatrist also seems to be experimenting with you about trial and error. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with you either, even though he tries to pretend he does, and he tries different pills until one of them seems to work. At least that’s what that bad bug, whose name I prefer not to remember, did to me. I trusted him until I realized that my friends, my co-workers, my family, were looking at me with a face that increasingly resembled horror. Finally someone told me: “Luisito, have you been drinking at home again? Or what are you taking? White powder from the nose? Because you behave as if you were another person.”
They were the f… pills, of course. I didn’t realize it, but that was exactly what was happening to me: that I was no longer myself but a thoughtless bundle of nerves who never got tired, who laughed nervously at anything and said nonsense the size of boulders.
Don’t leave us alone – perhaps this is the most important thing – because the depression patient very often comes close to death by his own will, and loneliness is the best of all incentives to take that small leap.
I understand Álvaro Morata perfectly and I know what he has suffered, what he is suffering and, almost fatally, what he will suffer. In the world there are (as far as we know) around 400 million people who are visited by Churchill’s “black dog”. We are all different, we do not form any type of community and we are nothing alike. Our symptoms are very different, as are the frequency of these visits and their duration. But we all have something in common: there is something in there that wakes up from time to time and doesn’t let you live.
Help us, gee. As? First of all, please remove that pity face that makes us think that we have become stupid. It’s not true. Treat us as always, normally, and don’t bring up the subject unless we want to talk about it. Do not leave us alone – perhaps this is the most important thing – because the depression patient very often comes close to death by his own will, and loneliness is the best of all incentives to take that small leap. Keep in mind that the black dog leaves scars every time it bites: there are movies that we will never be able to see again, books, places, customs that once were and that have become barbed wire. And, for what you want most, stop telling us “take care, Luisito, love” every time you see us. We already do it!
We are not sick. We are people who, from time to time, go through a period of illness, the same as rheumatic people or those who have renal colic. But these are diseases, so to speak, respectable, or at least normal. Depression has a much worse reputation and a terrible social consideration. So don’t make us feel worse for suffering from it. That would be enough. Thank you.
#black #dog
