Art Buchwald & Me: Please Understand Us

Melancholia by Albrecht Durer

For as long as I can remember, which means well back into my childhood, I have suffered from melancholia. I much prefer that word to clinical term depression. Melancholia seems to best suggest what it is for me: always present, although immobilizing to various and altering degrees. Clinically it’s called dysthymia (or clinical depression) and involves long-term, chronic symptoms that do not completely disable, but keep one from functioning well. There have also been periods of major depression: it feels to me as if I have been in one of those for most of the past ten years!

I realize that everyone is depressed or melancholy at some time. What most people do not understand about dysthymia is that it is with one (me) all of the time. So when people ask, “What is making you depressed?” they do not understand my answer: “Nothing.” I learned in grad school that the depression most people experience is a transient situational disorder: transient because as it came it will also go away; situational because it is related to specific circumstances—divorce, death of a loved one, loss of a job, etc.; disorder because malady can be defined. But for those tormented by dysthymia—constant melancholia—the sad feelings and actual physical pain never go away; there is no specific circumstance to grieve; the problem remains undefined.

I have been attempting to blog about melancholia/dysthymia for a long time. However, I have never been to put into words—even these words I am now writing—what it is I am trying to say, what I want you, the reader, to understand. It is difficult because, as someone once wrote:

Depression is not like anything. Words are symbols we use to communicate things, but their meaning is only distantly related to reality. Nothing is like anything. Everything is. Depression is knowing that. (Unknown)

The death two days ago of Art Buchwald encouraged me to finally write and post this blog. Buchwald suffered from depression all of his life. He was able to function in spite of it (and two major bouts of severe major depression), he said, by making people laugh:

Mike Wallace and Bill and I all had serious depressions at the same time. We helped each other get through them. When we finally came out of it, we called ourselves the "Blues Brothers" and went around talking to groups that were interested in mental health issues… Our mantra was, "Don't commit suicide because you might change your mind two weeks later."

We had a lot of fun, strangely enough, talking about depression. We argued about who had the worst depression. Styron claimed his was a 9 on the Richter scale. He said mine was just a rainy day at Disneyland. Art Buchwald

Like Buchwald, I learned early in life that the way to deal with my almost constant feelings of sadness and emptiness was to reach out to and serve others. It wasn’t always to make people laugh; usually it was to help folks, individuals are well as communities, who were in need, oppressed, down trodden, or themselves depressed. That altruistic need of mine to serve others, even at my own loss, has been the primary driver for just about every decision I have every made. It is even reflected in my Myers-Briggs profile as an INFJ (Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging): "The Protector" (or Counselor-Idealist, or The Mystic depending upon whose description of my personality type you choose to read).

And that, for me, is the rub. As the melancholia that has been for ever a part of my life differs from the transient situational depression most people experience, so my personality type differs from 99% on the Myers-Briggs universe:

The small number of this type (1 percent) is regrettable, since INFJs have unusually strong drive to contribute to the welfare of others and genuinely enjoy helping their fellow men. This type has great depth of personality; they are themselves complicated, and can understand and deal with complex issues and people.

Thus, I have attempted to write this post for years! Not as an apology or explanation of who I am, but simply in the hope that, as Keirsey entitled his book, someone might understand me.

Updates:

Mom is settled in the nursing home in central Kentucky near where my sister lives. Yesterday she had a most disturbing day: she found it impossible to stand on one leg (both of her knees are artificial) and her neighbor, Harriet, who lived across the street from her for the past 40+ years, died. However, when I spoke with Mom today, she was much better, physically and emotionally, and even spoke of hoping to be able to soon return to her home.

There is nothing new regarding my circumstances: my thanks to all for your kind words and emails.