October 16th, 2006
Despair, she wrote
I got an email the other day from someone who read something I wrote in Rain and Thunder. Her question is one that I have struggled with so much and continue to struggle with, that I thought it might be worthwhile to muse in public in case other women besides us two struggle with it as well. Lisa asks:
“I am wondering how you deal with despair…How do you stand knowing what you know, seeing what you see, feeling what you feel for womyn???? When I read your article, I felt like you might understand what I am talking about. Do you?”
I do understand. I so understand. And so, following are a few of my answers to the question, “How do you deal with despair?”
Answer #1: I don’t. I spend quite a lot of time feeling crappy. While depression and despair are not the same thing, depression can make it harder to handle the down side of seeing what we see and knowing what we know. I’ve struggled with depression since childhood—-with extended relief only in the past ten years or so—-and occasionally it still gets me down. Whether my difficulties result from genetic predisposition or the environment in which I was raised, or some combination, they are also, I believe, a completely understandable human response in any person who refuses to ignore the horror that is patriarchy. There’s this myth-—perhaps stemming from the influence of therapy and recovery in the culture, I don’t know—-that we have to be perfectly happy before we can be effective, indeed, before we can even act. And I think that’s false. Something Andrea Dworkin said—and it’s one of my favorite things that she said—
It is important to understand that we will live with a fair amount of pain for most of our lives. If your first priority is to live a painless life, you will not be able to help yourself or other women. What matters is to be a warrior.
Now fer cryin’ out loud, let’s not let socialized femininity make us hear that statement as saying that we should feel bad if we’re happy. Instead, let’s let it help us, comfort us, when we do feel the practically inevitable despair that can overwhelm us when confronting the oppression of women. Despite therapistic protestations that we should “let go of all that,” it’s okay to feel bad, and it’s okay that that badness stems from our awareness of the unjust social conditions in which women (including ourselves) live.
Answer #2: Badly. I have my favorite coping methods, just like everyone. They used to include TV, until I gave it away a few months ago under the guiding light of Yawning Lion. But I still give house room to lesbian detective fiction, woman-authored sci-fi and fantasy novels, stupid comedy movies, chocolate, and ice cream. Some other things I find soothing yet less potentially stupor-inducing are music and knitting.
Answer #3: By leaning hard on my friends. I’m really lucky to have a couple of radical feminist friends and a couple more in the pipe, as well as a radical feminist girlfriend. I rely on all of them to a degree that is probably somewhat dangerous, because I would most likely topple psychologically were that support to be removed. That’s why one of my current goals is actively seeking more close friends who share my politics and my values. We all know how hard that is. But as just one tiny example of why the effort to find and maintain a compatible support network is worthwhile, it’s my current girlfriend who helped me see the pattern in my depression, i.e., that it’s often related to my cycle. I was very resistant to that awareness for a long time, because so often patriarchy and individual dickheads blame women’s problems on our “hormones.” But she’s right, and now when I have a bad day, instead of getting terrified and believing that I’ve become clinically depressed once more and will never feel good again, I can glance at the calendar and say, yep, um-humm, I’ll feel more able to cope in a couple of days. And so far I have.
Answer #4: Meds. Yes, I took a tricyclic antidepressant for four years. I wasn’t ultimately happy with that as a solution to my difficulties, due to my unwillingness to participate in the pharmacoindustrial complex as well as an undefinable feeling that the problem was being masked rather than cured. However, that time period gave me some of my first glimpses into what it might feel like NOT to suffer a constantly depressed mood. In a way, the “blue meanies” cheered me up enough to believe that I could find a way to feel better that would be in line with my values.
Answer #5: Alternative care. Under the direction of a naturopath/homeopath, I’ve taken homeopathic remedies on several occasions; the first time, it was as if the clouds parted and rays of golden sunshine poured down upon me, while legions of cherubim warbled the hallelujah chorus. I took the remedy three times, and within a month my subjective experience was completely yet almost indescribably different from what the tricyclics did for me or from anything I had ever experienced before in my life-—I truly did feel as if the root of my unhappiness had been reached and soothed in a way I had never imagined possible. It was not a magic bullet, but it was a real, fundamental change, and I am grateful.
I have also used herbal remedies, such as st. john’s wort and oatstraw, which have helped me at different times and for different durations with the nervous tension that I am sometimes subject to.
Answer #6: Getting busy. This is the best one, and the hardest one for me to do. I so often get caught up in ruminating about how bad things are, and am unable to come up with the one perfect solution that I can implement myself that will instantly and completely transform patriarchal society into a garden of peace, justice and love-—and if I can’t have the one perfect instant solution, it seems somehow reasonable for me to sit around and feel bad about how horrible things are. But, you know, on my good days, I believe that anything we do, activism-wise, has got to be an improvement over the status quo. It doesn’t have to be big-—fixing everything is kind of a tall order for any one human anyway. I feel best when I am actively colluding with other women in the undermining of patriarchy, even in some small yet devilishly delightful way. It also feels pretty good to write something honest and true for this blog, especially when others (like the incredibly open-hearted ms. jared) find it useful or well-written enough to excerpt on their blogs. Or when women send me emails because something I wrote was coherent enough to make them think I might know something about how bad they sometimes feel. That’s my version of being a warrior, I guess, and I have to say, despair ain’t got nothin’ on that.
