On Depression: A Letter From Henry James, 1883

(In which the nineteenth-century novelist valiantly attempts to rally the spirits of friend and essayist Grace Norton.)  

According to the recently released compendium Letters of Note:  An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving A Wider Audience (first published within the U.S. earlier this month and sensitively compiled by British blogger Shaun Usher), James was likely still reeling from the passing of both his parents upon his hearing from Norton.  She had contacted the author, searching for direction, having been deeply effected by a similar loss to her family.  Most famously known for 1881's The Portrait of a Lady, James is accredited with infusing stark realism into his many works of narrative fiction, and here he speaks with the clarity and pragmatism that comes from experience.  It is almost eerie how vividly his voice still carries.  I recommend turning your attention to this stirring note of counsel ---if not also to the above publication, a remarkable trove of dispatches to and from historic figures who, through the application of words, manage to enlighten, amuse, astound, enthrall.  - L.S.

Henry James (National Portrait Gallery)

131 Mount Vernon St.,

Boston

July 28th

My dear Grace,

Before the sufferings of others I am always utterly powerless, and the letter you gave me reveals such depths of suffering that I hardly know what to say to you.  This indeed is not my last word---but it must be my first.  You are not isolated, verily, in such states of feeling as this---that is, in the sense that you appear to make all the misery of mankind your own; only I have a terrible sense that you give all and receive nothing---that there is no reciprocity in your sympathy---that you have all the affection of it and none of the returns.  However---I am determined not to speak to you except with the voice of stoicism.

I don't know why we live---the gift of life comes to us from I don't know what source or what purpose; but I believe we can go on living for the reason that (always of course up to a certain point) life is the most valuable thing we know anything about and it is therefore presumptively a great mistake to surrender it while there is any yet left in the cup.  In other words consciousness is an illimitable power, and though at times it may seem to be all consciousness of misery, yet in the way it propagates itself from wave to wave, so that we never cease to feel, though at moments we appear to, try to, pray to, there is something that holds one in one's place, makes it a standpoint in the universe which is probably good not to forsake.  You are right in your consciousness that we are all echoes and reverberations of the same, and you are noble when your interest and pity as to everything that surrounds you, appears to have a sustaining and harmonizing power.  Only don't, I beseech you, generalize too much in these sympathies and tendernesses---remember that every life is a special problem which is not yours but another's, and content yourself with the terrible algebra of your own.  Don't melt too much into the universe, but be as solid and dense and fixed as you can.  We all live together, and those of us who love and know, live so most.  We help each other---even unconsciously, each in our own effort, we lighten the efforts of others, we contribute to the sum of success, make it possible for others to live.  Sorrow comes in great waves---no one can know that better than you---but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it passes and we remain.  It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; through a darkness in which I myself in my ignorance see nothing but that you have made wretchedly ill by it; but it is only a darkness, it is not an end, or the end.  Don't think, don't feel, any more than you can help, don't conclude or decide---don't do anything but wait.  Everything will pass, and serenity and accepted mysteries and disillusionments, and the tenderness of a few good people, and new opportunities and ever so much life, in a word, will remain.  You will do all sorts of things yet, and I will help you.  The only thing is not to melt in the meanwhile.  I insist upon the necessity of a sort of mechanical condensation---so that however fast the horse may run away there will, when he pulls up, be a somewhat agitated but perfectly identical G. N. left in the saddle.  Try not to be ill---that is all; for in that there is a future.  You are marked out for success, and you must not fail.  You have my tenderest affection and all my confidence.

Ever your faithful friend---

Henry James

PERSONAL ASIDE:  My father and I do not communicate much on matters of delicate nor profound concern, yet, just when I had become convinced that my lingering melancholia and obsessive-compulsive patterns were inappreciable to even my most immediate family, he altered me to this text, leaving his copy of Mr. Usher's book open to the letter above.  No stranger to dark moods himself, he reminded me with one modest gesture that he is a sympathetic and kindred spirit.  Lesson being, never underestimate others (or, as James himself admonished, "don't [...] generalize too much").

Whither Must I Wander?

"Home, no longer home to me, whither must I wander?

Hunger my driver, I go where I must."

- Robert Louis Stevenson, Songs of Travel and Other Verses (XVI)

It is a peculiar state of mind when a ninety-calorie granola bar has the power to arbitrate your emotions, to hoist you from hopelessness to its reverse.  Only moments ago I was stewing in my usual depression ---confounded, bitter, made miserable by an inability to answer basic and persistent hunger cues.  Yearning for assistance, I was imagining how much "easier" meeting my body's needs might be if I could have the hand of someone to prod and support me when I ought to refuel, to bring me to the trough (so to speak).  Luckily, this morning a kindly spirit guide saw to me in the last of my dreams.  We were together in a mid-century California chalet, with the energy of other companions rising from a lower floor like the buzz of an active hive.  He was a sort of tidy older gentleman, a mentor presenting in the form of Tim Gunn  --both gentle and forbearing.  Without explanation I understood that he was a protector and gate-keeper.  In that place I was among a cabal of artists and creatives whose ranks I might infiltrate and observe, being accepted for everything that I am --in full, with faults.  From there, borrowing off the power and love of this figure, I found courage, however briefly, to be my own custodian.  And thus, that granola bar was unwrapped and consumed.  And I didn't pay it much mind.

It has become necessary for me to reference such abstractions because I do not find motivation to improve in my immediate surroundings.  Although occasionally inspired to puzzle together some sort of collage, I am not satisfying a deeper path or career trajectory here in the rural Maine of my parent's homestead.  When not completing chores or obsessive-compulsive assignments, some days I do little more than down bottle after bottle of iced tea and stare out a window.  I fall back on the notion that I "can't" manage significant improvement outside a specialized clinic, that I require meals and/or snacks prescribed and, on some occasions, firmly administered.  It's at these moments that I try to summon my logical self, addressing my case as a rational adult.  I am an uninsured, underfunded melancholic of weak body and constitution.  On the surface, I am in functioning health.  Labs would easily hint at my compromised organs, bones, and mineral count, but too often general practitioners don't know or understand what to look for.  While I know well enough that my full anatomy is being taxed, the gradual decline of a system subjected to starvation is not seen to merit emergency care.  With once-weekly therapy I have taken moderate steps towards blunting my illness:  weight-wise, the 1 1/2 pounds sacrificed to Manhattan have been recovered and improved upon; behaviorally, exercise demands remain persistent, but not outrageous.  What's more, I recently observed minor bleeding in my (ahem) "lady parts" --menstruation being something I have experienced no more than the fingers on two hands.  Given that such discharge is considered a sign of health, those I have informed of it have assumed I am doing better.  And yet, I lack for T&A and my heart feels tight and burdened.  Simply put, my body is exhausted, with sleep a reliable recess from the stress it shoulders.  The days feel barely surmountable; within them I flounder, moored to the same sets of holy parameters.  I am in a vaguely promising state of mind, willing to be cooperative if I can just get more of a nudge when I stall.  On rare occasions I have read other people's recovery blogs and, in comparison, I don't find myself "as compromised" or severely enveloped in disordered thinking.  (I do not answer in the affirmative to the litany of questions primarily used when evaluating anorexics.  For instance, I understand food to be a powerful and important medicine and do not often judge others on their proportions, unless grossly exaggerated, as any person might.  Furthermore, I am aware that I look and feel remarkably improved with some padding for my sharp edges, which are close to surface-level.  True, there exists a ceiling for the number of pounds I am willing to acquire, but at least I am aiming for something.)  And while I will cop to visions of suicide, such thinking has been a part of my life for nearly twenty years.  In daydreams, I draft morbid visions:  like Little Jack Horner pulling plums, my eyeballs, plucked, come uncupped from their skull.  Without these glossy corks, a wailing, nettled soul rides the air, dispersing like a flour cloud, caking the dingy surfaces that surround.  With these sorts of musings, my mind snaps back, and I chide myself for being so self-indulgent.  I know that I "owe" it to my father not to embarrass or taint the family with the notoriety and general creepiness of a body abandoned.  

I fly back to picturing the benefits of hospital care, a reoccurring reverie since my early teens, when I lost ten or fifteen pounds just after graduating grammar school.  That July I was put on bed rest and given a private room at a local medical center for a dozen days, having become devoted to a forty-five minute workout on my parent's NordicTrak® Classic Pro Skiier and terrified of any food with "fat".  In a rather secluded pediatric wing I was delicately and tenderly treated by medical personnel.  To my detriment, I have harbored a warped fondness for the notion of being "taken-in" --of being nursed towards better health.  My memory of what occurred has been pulled back and distorted, a mere refraction of light spied at the end of a backwards-facing periscope.  I have forgotten the many seriously unpleasant requisites that accompanied this, if not all, institutional treatment approaches for an eating disorder.  The harsh, unfortunate truth:  convalescent sets-ups are awkward, expensive, and often psychologically injurious.  Should a person be given some sort of recovery bed in a ward of the state, non-private quarters are assigned, with bathroom monitoring and supervised meals selected mainly without patient input.  Exercise, it goes without saying, would be verboten.  Educational sessions incorporating preventative strategies and group therapy constitute your daytime schedule, and you are asked again and again to map-out the history of how your problems arose.  Basic freedoms are traded for the privilege of simply, surely surrendering to one prominent biological demand-- refeeding with true earnestness.  In psychiatric institutions you are committed to recovery because, well, you are committed.  It is painful and humbling, and difficult for everyone:  the staff escorts you like a skittish horse, his blinker hood buckled tight.  Made blind at morning weigh-ins, those signed-in are expected to cooperate without interfering with THE PROGRAM.  Of course, you can't just surrender your mental fixations at check-in, and there is chafing, no matter how genuine your desire for repair.  Embracing all tenets around which a staff may rally is especially difficult should you feel moderately protective of your established ways, however "incorrect" or supposedly evil.  It is not unusual for those afflicted to think of their mental disorder as a sort of compadre --equally revered and resented-- assigning it a name, cleverly derived and/or abbreviated.  (On the internet, scores of discussion groups, even Pinterest boards, have been devoted to Ana and her ilk.  Seen as BFFs to some, "frenemies" to others, Ed, Mia, Cat, & Olive have come to constitute a notorious crew.)  Yes, the disease roosts inside of us:  a stillborn twin; we become riled and defensive at the thought of her removal.  There's no escaping ingrained neuroses, and acquired knowledge of calorie exchanges can haunt you long after mealtime.   Stress is provoked not only by the food, but just as often by the histrionics of those also needing "special handling".  You are both the guinea pig and the researcher, testing the limits of what your body can absorb and mind endure under new and foreign forms of duress.  Despite all this, I would have months, if not years ago volunteered myself to the Portland program --the sole option covered by Maine Medicaid-- if it weren't for the firm disapproval of my parents, who want to see me prove that I can incorporate corrected dietary guidelines into everyday practice, and reject the strict OCD routines/dieting hang-ups so vigorously espoused for most of my lifetime.  There is also the issue of having been in this program previously (on more than one occasion) when it was a full-on inpatient affair.  Ten years later, one is expected to afford housing in the vicinity of the hospital, returning Monday through Friday for part-time treatment.  In 2004, shell-shocked and riled by the seeming backwardness modeled at one clinic near Philadelphia, I reluctantly submitted to the New England Eating Disorders center out of Mercy Hospital.  Cordial as an individual, I wasn't a model participant.  I spitefully remonstrated against their rules by stealthily sneaking pieces of food off my tray or artificially loading myself down at weigh-ins.  It left me anxious and ashamed, but at the time I literally couldn't help myself.  This leaves me to fear the residual reprimand of its serious (albeit good-humored) task force, a largely unmodified company of specialists.  Aside from a few key nurses, the staff had trouble seeing me beyond the unflattering shell of my affliction.  Even though I went back in 2006 with a much improved and more cooperative demeanor, I feel as if they would still reference our initial falling out.  Suffice it to say, I would much prefer to enter a facility in which I don't carry a history upon arrival.  

Day in and day out I mull over wanting to be away, to have an existence somewhere else --largely New York or L.A.  As I've said, my health creeps and creeps in a positive direction, but at a glacial pace.  If I truly want to gain independence I need to make myself sturdier, but with most steps forward I take one back.  Shuffling along, I extend this process needlessly.  I can maintain a weight when I get to it, but building-up pounds takes a very special effort.  When I consider the cons of hospital treatment I become more assured of myself and my mission.  But my future is an inscrutable dangling secret; beyond a college diploma and growing cache of commercially-sound artworks, as a singleton, I've made few provisions.  Like Blanche DuBois, I have "always depended on the kindness of strangers."  I am not ashamed of charitable assistance, at least if it is opportunity-based and not of great financial strain.  Might I find some sort of real-life benefactor --a counterpart to that visiting Tim Gunn apparition of my waking hours?  I seek to make way in an urban environment and in a creative field where I might leave permanent impact.  I am sustained by a grand yearning to change a corner of our culture (hopefully, for the better).  I have tried to capitalize on this period of recovery by developing this blog, along with bolstering activities I enjoy like painting, photography, and maintaining correspondence with online connections.  (I attempt to take a cue from Winston Churchill, who famously said, "Never let a good crisis go to waste.")  If I want to move the world more than a flaccid falling leaf, I need to charge ahead.  But where should I do the charging?  Whither Must I Wander?