Another book I devoured on holiday (see What Alice Forgot) was ‘Reasons to Stay Alive’, by Matt Haig. When I met my friend at the airport, she plonked it down in front of me. Read this. I got excited: I’d been meaning to read it for ages. It wasn’t the first time it had been recommended to me.
What I got out of this book is less to do with the highs and lows of pro-creation and more to do with taking control of my life: which in turn of course makes me more able to make positive choices. The book is a personal account of one man’s journey through depression, regularly contextualised with the bigger picture. By the end of his journey, the writer has two children who he seems to find a lot of joy through.
Children are not a cure for depression, but for me, depression had a very clear impact on my feelings towards having children. I guess what the book has done is given me the conviction to write about it here: to include it in my journey. Partly this is because Matt’s honesty has inspired me, but it’s also because the book made me realise that a lot of the things I did in the depths of my depression, and still sometimes do now as I lie on the outskirts of it, were completely ‘normal’. And yes, there is still unfortunately some joy in feeling normal. Especially when for so long I have felt very abnormal in many people’s company even including my own family. Things like my compulsive swallowing. My separation anxiety when I wasn’t in the company of the person who was my primary support. These things were not my isolated failings: they were typical symptoms. Nothing to be ashamed of.
He also taught me that it is not something that I am ever going to be ‘over’. ‘It comes back in flashes,’ Matt says, ‘when you are tired or anxious or have been eating the wrong stuff’. It is something that I will need to manage, like an addiction, and acknowledging this gives me more power over it. There have been many times I have told myself I am ‘cured’. When I stopped counselling. When I finally hosted something again. When I finally left the house like I used to: with a spring in my step. When I went a week without crying. When I joined a new club. But all that did was set me up to fail. By acknowledging this part of me is here to stay, was perhaps always there in some latent form, I can manage it better. I can find a concrete floor again. Because if depression teaches you anything, it’s that no matter how sorted and ‘successful’ your life is, it’s worthless if there’s an unstable, confused and uncertain person at the helm of it. And the most important thing I learnt from this book, and perhaps from my holiday as a whole, is that I don’t want to focus anymore on building a happy, successful, positive life. It’s pointless. I’ve done that before. And it ended. Because things do. The only way to sustain something like that is to stop growing and to be static, which is of course counter-productive.
“No more focusing on life plans and working out if I want to follow the all-important life game.”
Instead, I plan to focus on building me. So that regardless of what’s happening on the outside, beyond my control, I am able to sustain myself. It’s myself that I am stuck with for the rest of my life. I am the only sustainable factor and it’s time to cultivate myself, instead of planting objects and ideas around me, hoping they grow well. I used to think that my environment was so important. It’s not. No more focusing on life plans and working out if I want to follow the all-important life game: job, marriage, mortgage, children. If I build a stable structure, the view will become less important. Irrelevant. And I wouldn’t even want to become a mother until I could be a source of stability, strength and comfort. Even if I woke up tomorrow convinced I wanted children, there’s no way I could declare myself ready. You’ve got to put on your own air mask before you can put on anyone else’s.
It was far easier to want children in the depths of depression. I believe this was because I longed to feel connected to life again. It is very easy to feel detached from society. Especially when you find yourself on a different scale to not only everyone else, but also to your former self. Pre-depression, I would celebrate things like hosting events for hundreds of people, or emigrating alone. Suddenly I found myself celebrating being able to walk into a pub, or eat more than half a bagel. And this traps you in a cycle of negativity, as Matt says, ‘being relieved about surviving a trip to the corner shop was another confirmation of sickness, not wellness.’ You realise you’ve fallen off the life path; having a baby seems like a good way of getting back on. Everyone cares about babies. You can connect with the person you love on a completely new, ethereal level. You can make new friends. There’s a distraction. Something new. Something real in a world that feels completely manufactured.
And there’s no way back.
And it’s not a cure.
“Some of the reasons I used to have for not wanting children e.g. my vagina will be deformed (no, really), have somewhat lost their impetus.”
But something has changed and come out of the other end with me, and the writer describes something similar. It’s this: depression made me care more about abstract values, from which a more positive attitude towards being a parent came about. Who I am was stripped down to a faint outline and it was terrifying, not just for me but for those who knew me. ‘Who in the world am I?’ Alice asks as she grows into a giant in Wonderland. ‘Ah, that’s the great puzzle.’ That wonderful mystery of life didn’t feel so great at the time. And I am very reluctant to label myself as anything now. I’m the Ghost of Christmas Past, ever-changing in form. But what seems to have stuck is the following: I hate shopping now; I am less interested in fashion, hair, make-up, drinking and branding myself; my ego at work has reduced dramatically. In short, all of the sort of materialistic values I spent my twenties embracing, I seem to have let go of (perhaps they’ll come back but I hope not). As a result, some of the reasons I used to have for not wanting children e.g. my vagina will be deformed (no, really), have somewhat lost their impetus.
Like Matt, I became very interested in how the brain works and read three non-fiction books on the subject. As a result, my brain and I now have a very cautious relationship. It’s a terrible creature of habit with a very rehearsed organisation system: sort of like news feed which keeps drawing on the same sources. It takes concerted effort to have any real control over it; something I am only just starting to try out. Our hearts/our guts however are much less lazy. They are far more open to the reality of the situation. To be fair to the brain, it does have the added pressure of keeping the whole body running, and of instigating fight or flight: it has to judge the world by its cover to keep us safe from predators. But what I can now see is that my fear of having a deformed vagina was not a genuine emotion. It was a thought I paid too much credence to based on some crazy notion that I couldn’t feel as attractive; that I’d be a less worthy partner. Perhaps I read it in Cosmopolitan once.
Depression made that reason, and many others of a similar nature, seem ridiculous. In starting to value feeling over thought; the abstract over the concrete, raising a child started to seem rich, overwhelming and wonderfully terrifying. However, that doesn’t mean all my concerns have been eradicated. It’s just helped me to sift through and separate the more genuine reasons from the artificial ones.
Before I read the book, perhaps from my disdain for contemporary living which peaked as my depression did, I had a strong conviction that depression is not only a rejection of our lifestyles but also potentially a catalyst for social reform. Sort of like a reset of the human mind. It’s a path back to what matters. Reading Matt’s experiences gave more strength to that idea because they were so similar to mine. He too developed a finer appreciation of feeling over thought, ‘I want…to feel all that can be felt’; he too became a sort of non-religious Buddhist; he too benefited from mindfulness, and the realisation that we’re part of something bigger. Perhaps it’s coincidence. Or perhaps, and of course this is easier to believe, that’s depression’s ‘point’: that’s what it aims to get us to.
I don’t mean to sound grandiose. Depression does not elevate people. It strips you down. But that can have benefits; could have even more benefits for humanity at large if people stopped seeing it as an illness. Imagine if the earth could stripped of all its development and returned back to its natural starting point. We could see that as a disaster, or we could see it as an opportunity. A chance to start again, with hindsight, building up all the amazing things we created, and doing our best to keep the rest at bay. I am grateful I got the chance to start again and I know that if I ever have children, I will be able to trace it back to this experience. What’s quite scary though, is the idea- the thought- that if I hadn’t gone through this, if I’d remained driven by my old values, what would I have missed out on?
Please do comment if you’ve had similar experiences or thoughts. Reading Matt’s book reminds me of how important it is to share J.
The Motherhood Choice 