UNRESPONSIVE

There was a morning last week when my laptop was unresponsive. That used to be when I’d get a spinning rainbow on the screen but I haven’t seen one of those in ages, thank goodness. This time, I just couldn’t log in. I couldn’t even get the log in window to appear. The laptop was just in a mood.

 

Sadly, I can relate.

 

I have had several psychiatrists tell me I’m unresponsive, too. Unresponsive to treatment. For a while, my partner thought that meant I was uncooperative. I have, as he’s pointed out many times, a stubborn streak. I won’t argue the point. But unresponsive and uncooperative are not the same thing. 

 

Like my laptop, sometimes I’m not in the mood to function properly, if at all. We all have off days, but I’ve been going through an off season. Much of the summer has been a struggle. 

 

It’s hard for me to talk about. I don’t want to sound like Debbie Downer, even if the name fits. Sometimes it seems that talking about it—acknowledging depression—feeds the beast. But ignoring it doesn’t work either. Depression won’t stand for that. 

 

When I do talk about it, one of the hardest things for a listener to understand is that my clinical depression is not caused by a particular circumstance like a death or a setback. It’s not on account of a hurdle I failed to clear, leaving me to faceplant on cement and bloody myself from forehead to ankles. To be sure, I have had a harder time dismissing political affronts that seem to always spin from the daily antics of Donald Trump. My mood is also not helped by the fact I’m struggling to write these days. The latter situation is a result of rather than a cause for depression. Even irritating occurrences like bad dreams have a greater impact. I awaken out of sorts and struggle to recover. It’s like that expression about beating a guy when he’s down. 

 

For years, I struggled to find a specific reason for my depression. If I knew the cause, I would have something specific to confront in hopes of having the mood dissipate. What I have is beyond episodic depression that can bring down “regular” folks due to an event in their day or week. Alas, my depression is chronic. Not constant but, when it sets in, it overstays its visit, a lingering house guest that never had an invitation in the first place. 

 

My now-retired family doctor who saw me for three decades regularly told me, “It’s biochemical.” He always said it with a compassionate smile, the underlying message being, Stop tormenting yourself by searching for an explanation. 

 

So, if I’m to fully absorb what professionals tell me, there isn’t a cause I can confront to ease depression. Being unresponsive to treatment—including medications and various forms of individual and group therapy—I just have to sit with my unwanted house guest for as long as it chooses to crash on my sofa, the remote control always in its grip. As this round of depression settled in, I initially felt dread and discomfort. Just because it triggered a sense of déjà-vu didn’t make anything any easier. In this case, a cliché fits perfectly: familiarity breeds contempt. 

 

There are moments of relief. On some mornings, I awaken and feel “normal.” My mood is stable. I entertain the notion that I’ve made it through this latest round of depression. It has moved on. Alas, it has just overslept. If I’m lucky, I get the whole day off. But then, I get up the next day and struggle settles in by the time I brush my teeth. Hello, depression. Back again. It’s the worst kind of groundhog day. 

 

There are moments when I can outrun it. Or out-bike it. Or out-hike it. Exercise gives me a focus or distraction. During all my years of doing step classes in the ’90s, I never felt that endorphin lift others talked about. Back then, I don’t think jogging or biking did much either. Maybe it was just more subtle. Maybe the fact I get so low helps me feel the contrast when a little adrenaline kicks in. Whatever it is, I am grateful for a reprieve. Sometimes that lift stretches until bedtime. The depression hasn’t gone away; it just hasn’t caught up. It’s times like this when I wish I could spend every moment of every day biking.  

 

I have to ride this season out. We’re officially in autumn now. I wish my depression would check the calendar, shudder over the fall chill and head far, far south. If only.

 

Dread and discomfort have evolved into a deeper sense of pain and agony. I tolerate what feels intolerable. I remind myself I’ve had other prolonged bouts of depression that eventually subsided. And so I wait.

   

DOING NOTHING

I recall a teacher colleague who had a family cabin on BC’s Savary Island saying the best thing about going there was doing nothing. “People just don’t understand that if they don’t have that kind of place.”

 

Being as we were comparing experiences at my family cottage and her cabin, I nodded emphatically. It’s always nice to make a connection. But I’ve often wondered how good I actually am at being idle. 

 

To be sure, I haven’t inherited or learned my grandfather’s propensity for constant tinkering, a hammer or handsaw always at the ready for a series of cottage projects. It was never just one. Fixing a board on the deck would lead to adding extra nails to planks in the Muskoka chairs which might then lend itself to adding a new coating of paint to the chairs. How many layers, how many colours had been slapped on over the decades? 

 

My grandfather, a good-natured man with definite ways of doing things, must have glanced at me from time to time sitting on the deck without a single tool in my reach and thought, Now that’s an idle lad. 

 

I have as much history with the toolbox in the cottage shed as I do the tackle box full of shiny lures. No, I don’t fish. As a kid, whenever I was dragged along for a fishing expedition with friends, I silently prayed for the fish to stay away while talking extra loudly and splashing my feet in the water. 

 

“You’re scaring away the fish,” a friend said.

 

“Oh, am I? Sorry.” It was one of those Canadian apologies. Sorry, not sorry. Within minutes, I began splashing again. Let friends think I had ADHD. Let me save a trout.

 

So, no, I don’t tinker and I don’t fish while at the cottage, two stereotypical guy things to do to pass the time. But still I do something. 

 

My good friend, Ron, in Vancouver once said, “You don’t know how to do nothing.” This is a guy who spent a year watching mushroom videos on YouTube and begins watching one horror movie a day at the beginning of August each year in anticipation of Halloween. I suppose he’s doing things, even if they seem like nothing to me. He’s content to stay put, a true homebody who books his vacation times to sit on the sofa and watch the Olympics during even-numbered years.

 

What constitutes nothing? I’ll posit that napping qualifies. Sure, it involves breathing, perhaps some rapid eye movement and possibly a dream but subconscious conduct seems too easy to be something. Easy. If only. I don’t nap. Can’t. I’m on a medication that seems to help me conk out at night but denies any daytime shut-eye. So nothing in the form of napping isn’t an option.

 

Maybe it’s judgy of me, but I’ll say watching TV or streaming on a laptop is pretty close to nothing. It’s passive. That’s why advertisers pay big bucks for commercials. They know many viewers will sit through political ads, feel-good jingles about McDonald’s and all those pharmaceutical sales pitches in the U.S. At home, I don’t have a television. My flatscreen fell and shattered four years ago and I realized my living room looked better without it. As for the TV at the cottage, there are a couple of different remote controls and there’s a specific order for pressing buttons to get reception. I don’t try. I’d rather sit on the deck and gaze at all the stars in the nighttime sky after the sun sets. That’s something, isn’t it? 

 

If I stream a movie on my laptop, it can take four or five sittings over a few weeks to get through it, even if it’s something I’m enjoying. If someone raves about a series on a streaming channel, I may get through the first episode in a couple of viewings. Even if I like it, I usually tell myself, That’s enough. I have a sense of the show. But why commit to ten episodes or a half dozen seasons? I just don’t have the patience for passivity anymore. No one is more surprised about that than I am.  

 

I’m going to say reading is something. It’s not like TV. I can’t just open a book, stare at it and have something happen. There is more brain work involved. I realize the brain responds to television and movies but perhaps it’s the literary snob in me that elevates reading. When I finish a book, I feel I’ve accomplished something. Finishing a Toy Story movie or an episode of Hacks doesn’t feel like an accomplishment, whether I enjoyed it or endured it.  

 

Yesterday, I tried really hard to sit at the cottage and read one of the books I’d packed. A treatise on Gus Van Sant’s 1991 movie, My Own Private Idaho, may not be a typical beach read but, being as I read it fifteen feet from the beach, it counts. I may disagree but many people view a beach read as tantamount to doing nothing. I started to get restless as soon as I told myself my designated beach read was nothing. I managed to read twenty pages between fidget breaks to wash the dishes, reorganize my suitcase and step out onto the dock to snap photos. All of that, from scrubbing a pot to reading a writer’s opinion that My Own Private Idaho perfectly meshed with the rise of Nirvana, felt like something.

 

Before flying to Ottawa and heading to the cottage, Ron questioned why I was renting a car. When he visited for a couple of days last year, I picked him up in Ottawa, stopped so he could buy groceries and he was perfectly content to stay put at the cottage, frequently exhaling loudly, gazing at the river and saying, “This is nice.” I headed into town as I always do, once if not twice each day. A writing session farther afield. A different view of the river to photograph. A browse through the local bookstore to add another title or two to my stacks of “to be read” books back home. 

 

This morning, I studied local maps online, looking for day trips to pass some time. I checked out what movie was playing in both of the small towns near the cottage that have a cinema. (Why are they both showing the same movie…Practical Magic 2? Since I didn’t see the original, the sequel is a definite pass.) I did some research on local gyms in case I wanted to try a different place than the familiar but dumpy spot I’ve been going to for thirty-five summers where there hasn’t been a single upgrade and where they always seem to be playing AC/DC. (I’m more of an ABBA guy.) I tried to find a nearby shop where I can rent a bike. Even when I’m doing next to nothing, my brain and body are itching to do something. 

 

Why can’t I just breathe and say to myself, This is nice? I’m reminded of all those mindfulness exercises I’ve sat through during group therapy, my eyes wide open, my legs vibrating as I scan the circle and see everyone else sitting still, eyes closed, imagining a forest walk while feeling their slow breaths rising through their bodies. Mindfulness has always been maddening. My recurrent thought: Can we just move on? And, if not, why can’t I move on…and out of the room? 

 

Yes, I’d rather tinker with a hammer and nails. Even something for which I have no skills and which I’m bound to botch is better than nothing. 

DINNER FOR TWO, TABLE FOR ONE

For four years, Evan and I have lived a relationship in which we’re apart more than we’re together. When we met for the first time, he was living in Seattle, I was in Vancouver and COVID protocols were still in place. That first date was such a great start that the second date became an entire weekend with base camp being an Airbnb at a midway point between the two cities which happened to be a rural area where the closest town was actually a hamlet that was three blocks long. There didn’t have to be much around us. The spark was unmistakable. 

 

Once again we had to return to our daily lives in separate countries. I remember our next-day phone conversation with Evan asking, “So how do you want to proceed?”

 

Cautiously, I asked, “What do you mean?”

 

“How often do we contact each other?”

 

I didn’t hesitate: “Every day.”

 

“Oh!” I couldn’t tell if that startled or excited him. Likely, it was a little of both. But I’m not a fan of texting. There can be too many gaps between replies (especially by me since I like to have my ringer off when I’m writing and often forget to check my phone during breaks). At the time, I was also often confused about when a text conversation ends. So often with friends, I’d wait for another reply to come through but—poof—they had moved on to something else. Well, okay…

 

With very few exceptions, Evan and I have FaceTimed every day. I look forward to our evening chats but they don’t come near the closeness of being together in person. Sometimes they even feel flat when we’re just reciting routines of the day. I worry that my side of the sharing can come off as boring since my days as a person with mental health disabilities can be quite small. I don’t have a job so there are no stories about conflicts or amusements with clients or coworkers. There isn’t an office dog whose endearing antics I can relate. I sit. I write. I move to a café. I write more. Even if I order a scone, that doesn’t expand the conversation. I query an agent. I hear nothing back. I go to the gym. I resume writing. My day doesn’t lend itself to lively FaceTimes.

 

But a month ago, Evan and I started having dinners together once a week when we’re apart. Sure, we’ve eaten countless times while FaceTiming, Evan eating leftovers from the same pizza he’s been portioning out for three days, me eating something simple straight out of the saucepan. (Why plate and garnish a meal if I’m the only one present? Why not make cleanup go faster?) What’s different now is that we reserve one evening for a proper dinner date, albeit virtually. 

 

It begins a couple of days ahead of time when we agree on a new recipe to make. He hits the grocery store when it fits his schedule and I do the same. Because Evan is a more confident cook—he tosses things in while I measure out everything according to the recipe’s instructions—I have to do some extra prep before the call. I pull out ingredients from the pantry and refrigerator. I wash the spinach; I chop the garlic. I set portioned out ingredients in ramekins just like on a cooking show. It will mean more cleanup but, hey, it’s just once a week.

 

The basic recipe is vegetarian since I don’t eat meat. Sometimes Evan adds chicken or some other ingredient that is not part of my diet; other times, he surprises himself by going meatless himself. For non-vegetarians, that often feels edgy. What about protein? Will the meal taste okay? Will I sleepwalk in the night and find three empty tuna cans on the counter come morning? Evan’s been with me long enough to know when he can survive or, gosh, even enjoy a dinner without meat. 

 

Once we’re FaceTiming, we prep the meal together, chatting about our day while also commenting on when to add the garam masala and how long to toast the orzo. If my anecdote about writing a tricky paragraph fails to engross, there is always something to stir or a bowl to rinse. 

 

Tonight is our fourth meal together while being remote. Roasted cauliflower orzo. (The guy whose recipes we’ve been choosing from is big on orzo. I’ll have to buy more at the store today along with kalamata olives and, yes, cauliflower.) I will plate my meal and add fresh parsley as a garnish. It will be my most balanced meal of the week and the best looking as well. I’ll take a little longer to eat because there will be conversation between bites. We’ll critique the recipe, I’ll comment on how his looks better than mine. It probably has something to do with his candles, the linen napkin and the fact he’s more experienced in the kitchen, drawn-out pizza nights notwithstanding. Overall, the conversation will be livelier and FaceTime will feel more like an experience than an obligation. We’ll clean up together and extend the conversation with Evan taking to the patio and me settling into the sofa. The call will end as they all do with shared smiles, a little wave and “I love you.” But tonight is more special than last night’s or the ones to come over the week ahead. Although we’re 1,700 kilometres apart, it’s nice to have Date Night.