What’ll I Do?

I’m seated reclined in a faux leather recliner in a small room with a wood and glass door in a location 20 minutes from my home. The glass is treated to not let anyone to see in or out but to let the light in. I’m winding down from the latest Ketamine treatment, fully aware of my surroundings. I feel frail and old, just like I saw my Dad during the last medical appointments I accompanied him to. I’m in darkness except for the muted light coming in from the door and a lamp that is displaying different color dots of light moving around like the night stars on amphetamines. Ambient music is playing from an Alexa on a table near the chair. Like the most recent Ketamine treatments I never fully dissociated from the pain. And I was ruminating that this was the latest unsolvable problem. I agreed to these latest treatments just to get out of my head for a few moments. I didn’t really believe they’d cure me or even provide a route out of the unrelenting despair for just a few moments. 

The room is in a two story suburban mostly vacant office building that houses a title company a dermatologist office and a reality company. The visit began thankfully being driven to the building by first some friends but now by a Lyft driver. I’m not allowed to drive myself home. I check in with the front desk person after having filled out some online forms earlier in the day. Two of the three are standard psychological evaluation forms I’ve filled out many times during my past 28 years. Those two ask questions about my functionality. Am I having difficulty concentrating? With my sleep? With my appetite? Am I suicidal. My scores are maximum, confirming yes indeed day to day life has become unbearable. The third form confirms that if I try and drive myself home I will forgo any further treatments. Guessing that one is included for liability purposes. The front desk person asks if I’ve completed the forms and asks who is driving me home.

I take a seat in a small waiting area. Usually there are others there waiting as well. My friend who drove me to some appointments says there are a lot of people coming in for treatments. I share that is not a good sign. There are too many people still suffering in this post-apocalyptic world. Eventually I’m led to the room with the faux leather chair and Alexa and starlight lamp. The person leading me back to the room varies, but they are all very nice asking me about my day and week. They strap a device on my wrist with two finger attachments to monitor my blood pressure and heart rate. They leave the room and wish me a good infusion. Next a nurse enters along with usually another staff person. The nurse questions me about my how the previous treatments have gone and my current suicidal ideation level. Bad news with both. The nurse asks me about the dosage of my treatment. Do I want to increase or decrease? I don’t know. We agree to the Ketamine amount for this session. The nurse leaves as the other staff person inserts an IV into one of the veins in my arm. They turn off the lights and leave the room wishing me a good infusion. I tell Alexa to play some ambient music as I put a blanket I brought with me that has cartoon cats on it and cover my eyes with a blindfold. 

The Ketamine eventually kicks in, lessening the pain of my day to day existence, but I never fully disassociate from ‘reality.’ I always know that I’m sitting in a chair under a cat blanket listening to ambient music on an Alexa. Worrying about the Lyft ride home. I again recognize I feel as frail as Dad looked and wondered if he was cognizant enough to feel how alone he felt in his journey and knowing how minimally effective most medical treatments end up being. They can prolong life but is the quality of the remaining life worth even the effort it takes to get out of bed? Is there any hope left? Is it false hope?

One of the more insightful feelings from the treatments is there is a definite connection between my first serious breakdown in 1987 and this one. The connective tissue is my writing. In 1987 I suffered from my first writer’s block. I couldn’t write because it was too painful. This time around I wrote about my life of writing and depression in a result I’m very proud of that explains the connection between writing, feeling and thinking… I was able to write my novel with the first line of a writer finally figuring it out that the difference between fiction and non-fiction doesn’t exist, doesn’t in the end, matter. It was a freeing revelation insight that led to a 300 page unpublished novel, until now, my greatest accomplishment by far ever. All writing is fiction obviously told from a singular point of view. Many wounds and up and downs later, a dozen year puzzle of a memoir was written during this most recent devastingly sad time when there are political and day to day (I see constantly riding our light rail) differing versions of reality that have grown since 2020. 

Different realities, desperately clinging on to the familiar. Ketamine and writing. The core of my memoir is about being as authentic as I can be. Telling my life story in the most authentic way. I’m reminded of the Imgmar Bergman film ‘Persona” where halfway through the movie there is an apparent technical break in the film and when it resumes, reality is different. 

The staff have advised me to think about positive affirmations during the Ketamine journey. And I try my best. The most effective are reminding myself my heart and my ability to love remains because of living with the three latest great cats who mean the world to me. What will happen if I’m no longer around and they hopefully have a dozen or more years to live? I don’t want them separated but who is going to take in three cats? These thoughts are included in my memoir from a previous time and specific encounter with cat lover who tragically did take her life and leave her cats behind after sharing with me how much they meant to her.

The nurse after learning I write after the Ketamine sessions urged me to focus on writing about what life looks like without depression. This had been suggested by other healthcare practitioners during the past four years of trying to figure things out. Trouble is, and has been, I can’t picture that life. Publishing my memoir, having others read and like it, promoting it and being given speaking opportunities about its message are part of that vision. But the dark side of the vision is no one cares or reads the memoir or those that do don’t like it. I don’t exactly come off as the most likable person ever. I expose my many flaws hoping readers will respect the ‘courage’ and the overarching essential message about living in this world is to realize all of us are flawed and that is the essential lesson in understanding the most human being lesson we can learn. 

What else? I’m living with two four year old cats from the same litter that bonded from the start and a two year old soft and cuddly guy who has aggressively found his way with the other two and me, in an inspirational way. I desperately want to see their lifelong journeys together. Maybe I get hired as a Walmart greeter to support my debt and expenses and live a much less stressful existence. Maybe that lessons the pain and insanity of the past four years (and beyond)? I don’t know if that is a vision that works. 

Depression has always been my Achilles heel, my biggest weak spot that has always strategically known the precise way to shred me to unsolvable jigsaw pieces, destroying any sustainable livable years. The fear with agreeing to another round of Ketamine treatments and taking time off from work was what if it didn’t work? What if I didn’t feel just a little bit better figure out a way to think more positively? Well here I am. What is next?

Declaration of Distress

Last winter, I was standing on the platform waiting for the light rail to arrive. There were only a handful of us waiting for the train on either side of the tracks. A woman at the far end of the side I was on began walking toward me. I was standing about in the middle of the platform. When she got close, I knew she was going to ask one of two questions: “can you spare some change?” Or “do you have a cigarette?” She was in her mid-30’s wearing a ragged winter coat and sweatpants. “Do you have a dollar or two to spare?” She asked me. I told her I no longer carried any cash on me. I didn’t want to offer I have a Venmo account. She thanked me and instead of walking up the tracks to the next person, she stopped and stood right next to me. “You have a nice face,” she said to me. I thanked her for her kind words. We stood in silence for a few minutes and then she asked, “Are you OK?” I don’t think anyone had asked me that since the pandemic. “Been a rough few years,” I offered up. She agreed. I thanked her for her kindness not remembering the last time I shared such a true human moment. Eventually she made her way to the other side of the tracks and engaged with another weary looking soul. 

Months later I was in the darkest place ever. Most days, most moments I was in absolute unrelenting emotional anguish unable to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time, gasping for some relief. I understood the individual responsibility of showing up at work everyday. Work was the only thing giving my life structure. Had it not been for my job and knowing I owed it to my cats to feed them, clean their litter boxes and snuggle when offered, there was nothing else getting me out of bed other than somehow forcing myself to leave the house and ride the light rail to Twins and Timberwolves games. The unanswered question was how I could continue in a job that was killing me and any hope of ever getting better?

I started suffering from my latest bout of depression around a dozen years ago. It was major, making day to day life difficult. I found a therapist who finally diagnosed me with something that made sense, “existential angst.” I’m obsessed with finding the meaning of everything and when I discover most things don’t have much meaning, I suffer angst. This got exponentially worse during and since the pandemic. The passion I felt from my career work evaporated quickly as my skills noticeably declined to the point of attending most meetings and feeling like my soul was leaving my body. How did things get so dire so quickly(?). 

I read about the ‘Say Hey Kid,’ Willie Mays still one of the greatest baseball players ever before I ever saw him play. The first time I saw him was during my first season as a baseball fan (thanks Mom!) when during the post-season he played centerfield for the Mets despite his inability to throw the ball. So every fly ball out, or hit to centerfield meant one of the corner outfielders racing over to get a short flip from Willie to return the ball back to the infield. His place in the lineup was more ceremonial and honoring than actually who might be on the bench and a better option for success. 

During this same time, my favorite Viking of all time, Fran Tarkenton was leading the Vikings to three Super Bowls (all lost) in route to a hall of fame career. The only QB that had better statistics was Johnny Unitas, who Mom pointed out was another who hung on too long, hurting his team and his legacy. And that’s exactly how I’m feeling now. Absolute anguish every day almost every moment I don’t have something, anything, to distract my mind.

I do wonder how I would feel about all this if given another terminal diagnosis with a disease like cancer or Alzheimer’s? Would others understand this challenge differently? They give us drugs and therapy and experimental treatments for depression. Is it any less a disease than something physical? Mind over matter? Just suck it up? Stop dwelling, stop indulgently feeling sorry for myself. I lived a privileged life. I really don’t know. Depression for me is about feeling sorry for myself, listening too much to my negative voice/thoughts. But I’ve suffered from vastly different depression in my life. 

My existential angst picked therapist told me he didn’t believe in a broken human being. Didn’t believe someone, anyone, couldn’t heal. And here I am years later. I point to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘Cracked Up’ essays.’  Depression is like a cracked vase, put together again yet the cracks remain, or suffering from a skin wound where the remaining skin struggles to heal the wound. 

I’m taking the most substantial time off from work since I was hospitalized in the spring of 1988. It’s an act of desperation. . Self sufficiency has long been my mode. What happens when you discover only much too late, that’s an arrogant and selfish point of view? What do you do when your last ditch effort to merely find a way to exist miserably fails? Ketamine? An escape from reality or the reality you believe in even when others’ don’t. 

It’s definitely pride versus reality.

The one clear thing that emerged during the five Ketamine treatments is I need to publish my memoir. It’s killing me to have it done, being ready for over a year to share my story into the universe, only to have someone else tell me I can’t publish it. That decision sent me into a tailspin that gets worse every day. I’m very proud of what I’ve written. it took me over a dozen years to write, but in the end it accurately captures my lifelong struggle with depression, and tells that struggle in a very human way. To turn the pain into something expressed in an artistic manner is my proudest achievement. 

I haven’t written anything since completing the memoir over a year ago. And most of the year before that was spent re-writing bits of the story. Writing is core to my emotional well being and who I am and I didn’t realize until far too late how much I’ve suffered without it. I was hospitalized years ago because for the first time in my life, I couldn’t find a way to write. After being treated medically for depression I eventually found my way out by writing an unpublished  novel. I rediscovered my voice. The irony of this even darker depression isn’t lost on me. I’ve written the closest thing to my masterpiece that I ever will, it’s ready to be published, and now it’s drifting down the river away from me. 

I don’t at all understand why someone I never met decided my memoir violates the state’s code of ethics because I’m gaining personally from my professional position. I started writing my memoir in 2012 long before I was appointed the State’s Director of Elections. One out of the six chapters is about elections and that chapter almost entirely is about my career in elections before my current position. I never expected to make money off writing a memoir. Indeed it’s quite possible I will lose money since I hired a company to edit, help publish and market my book. This was never about money. It was trying to write the story of my life in an entertaining and artful way. Finally finding a way to tell my story.  It’s always been most important to me to write a publishable book. it’s never been remotely important to me to profit off it in any way other than making the universe just a little more kind. The people who made the devastating decision haven’t even read the book. I shared the elections chapter with a couple of them. The only person I’ve shared all this with doesn’t understand why I’m such a rule follower. Why don’t I just stop abiding by the rules that are ridiculous and make no sense in the larger scheme of things? Something about trying to remain obedient to the rule of law… Something that is in my genetic code.

I’ve never defined my life by my professional career. Certainly my career is part of who I grew up to be, but it’s a small part of who I am. I’m proud of the success I’ve had in my career but it’s far from what I’m most proud of in my life. The memoir at its core is about surviving depression and learning or not learning how to live the most human being way I can even if much of my life has failed at doing so. If there’s a universal message, if anything I’ve written resonates with others, it will be that part of the story. It was telling that when I attended a college reunion a few years ago, most people had no idea this was an actual job, nor what it was responsible for doing. Several thought being an election director meant running a campaign. It clearly would have violated the code of ethics if a company paid me to write a memoir because I’m the Director of Elections. I don’t see people lining up to read about election administration. 

I took a two and a half week medical leave. I hoped to get at least three things done: fix my toilet (broken handle), fix my scooter (stalled every time I stopped) and feel a little better. I surprised myself by figuring out the first two; hardly having any success as a handy man in my past but YouTube videos were helpful in both repairs. The third? Was it even a realistic possibility? What does feeling better feel like?  Four therapists ago I talked about feeling broken and diminished. My therapist pushed back against that notion saying humans can’t be broken or diminished, it was a false notion. The toilet flushed a bit differently and the scooter didn’t sound the same as it did before the stalling began. But both worked in their new versions. So can I?