WHEN THE DARKNESS COMES

One Man’s Journey Through the Rabbit Hole

Chapter 8

Triggers

So what triggers events?

Can I be silly here and say waking up? It is probably not the answer expected when somebody asks me what triggers my depression, but it may be the most accurate one I can give.

There are mornings when I wake up feeling as though the world is sitting comfortably on top of me and others when I wake up and everything seems perfectly fine. I have spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to identify what separates one from the other and, despite a lifetime spent looking for patterns in numbers, businesses and people, I am buggered if I can reliably find one.

This morning was much like most mornings at Smiths Lake. I woke around the break of dawn to the usual committee meeting of cockatoos, magpies and crows outside the window, accompanied, as always, by the obligatory song already raging away inside my head. I have no idea who appoints the morning’s musical director or why a particular song gets the gig, but apparently consciousness comes with its own soundtrack and mine is usually well into the first chorus before I have even decided whether I am awake.

There wasn’t much point trying to extract another half-hour of sleep from the day because once my head has decided it is awake, negotiations about returning to sleep tend to be fairly one-sided. The birds had the outside covered, the radio in my head was handling entertainment and there seemed little remaining role for me except to get up, so I headed towards the kitchen where my phone was sitting on the charger. None of this told me what sort of day was waiting for me, of course, because the song can be cheerful, melancholy, ridiculous or completely unrelated to anything I am feeling, and the morning can still go in either direction.

From there I went into the office because I had some outstanding tax returns I intended to attack. By about 7.30 they were done, which isn’t a bad morning’s work before a large proportion of the population has decided whether to put Vegemite or marmalade on its toast. Somewhere in between I made several expeditions to the fridge and helped myself to leftovers from the previous night, ostensibly because my stomach was growling but probably also because leftovers have always seemed to me to constitute a perfectly legitimate breakfast food if nobody is standing there to object.

I eventually showered and returned to the computer. A tradesman was due sometime during the day to have a look at the guttering around the house, but apart from that there was nothing particularly demanding on the agenda. Robyn got up, turned on the local radio station and allowed it to provide the background noise to another otherwise ordinary morning.

Nothing had happened to me, and that is important because I can usually find something if I look hard enough. Yesterday had not contained some great disaster, there was no threatening letter sitting unopened on the desk, no bank manager demanding money, no client announcing the end of a thirty-year relationship and no family catastrophe waiting to be dealt with.

I had slept, got up, completed the work I intended to complete, eaten, showered and returned to my desk. Yet a morning containing exactly those same ingredients can find me buoyant or black as the ace of spades, and there is not necessarily anything in the events surrounding it to explain the difference.

That is where the whole idea of triggers becomes difficult, because I understand why we look for them. I look for them myself, sometimes ridiculously so, because a trigger offers the possibility of cause and effect, and cause and effect offers the possibility of doing something. Give me a problem and my natural instinct is to solve it, or at least poke it with a sufficiently large stick until I understand why it refuses to be solved.

There have certainly been events in my life capable of knocking me down. Rejection has hurt, although until recently I don’t think I had ever consciously classified rejection as one of my triggers. Relationships with the opposite sex created their share of problems when I was younger, and losing a client can still hurt considerably more than the financial value of the lost work would justify. When you have invested yourself in relationships, professional or otherwise, discovering that somebody no longer wants what you thought you brought to them is difficult to treat as merely another transaction.

Disappointment in people can get to me as well. I have said often enough that I don’t suffer fools particularly well, although that probably requires the qualification that I have considerable tolerance for somebody who doesn’t know something but is willing to learn. It is people who should know better who can really set me off, particularly when their failure to do something obvious creates unnecessary work or problems for everybody else.

Dumbing It Down probably contains enough examples to establish that case beyond reasonable doubt. I have spent a fair proportion of my life feeling as though I am dragging people up hills while wondering why something apparently obvious requires quite so much explanation, and there are days when my patience for another climb is considerably less generous than others.

There are also triggers where I don’t need to search very hard for the connection. If something goes wrong with any of my children, I jump to attention. It doesn’t matter which child, how old they are or how capable they have proved themselves to be, because some part of being their father apparently remains convinced that my job description includes being available when the wheels begin to wobble.

I don’t want to be their saviour, and I don’t think being a parent means throwing money at every problem until it disappears. I can help financially if I need to, and there have been occasions when I have done exactly that, but money isn’t really what sits underneath the reaction. I want to be an assisting, guiding light, somebody they know is there while they work their own way through whatever has happened.

Perhaps some of that comes from knowing what it feels like when the backup isn’t there. I don’t want them to fail because they didn’t have the support I felt I never had, and I certainly don’t want them experiencing that particular hopelessness of looking behind themselves when things have gone badly and discovering nobody standing there.

During the bankruptcy years there was a period when we lived in a caravan park on the river at Sackville in north-western Sydney. There was no reliable income arriving and there were plenty of things I couldn’t give the boys that other fathers might have been able to provide without thinking twice. The boys never made an issue of it and never demanded more than I could give them, which in some ways probably made the feeling worse because there wasn’t even anybody except myself accusing me of failing them.

One memory from that period can still drop me like a rock in a pond if I allow myself to stay with it for too long. I took the boys to the circus, which in itself required the sort of calculation that accompanied almost everything I did in those days. I could afford the tickets, and getting them through the gate mattered because I wanted them to have the experience rather than have our financial circumstances decide that this was another thing they couldn’t do.

The problem with taking children to a circus is that buying the ticket only gets you through the gate. Once inside there is popcorn, drinks, souvenirs and all the brightly coloured things deliberately positioned at the eye level of children whose parents are then required to negotiate the difference between want and can afford. On this occasion it was a glow stick, hardly the sort of purchase that should feature prominently in the financial history of the Banks family, yet I couldn’t afford it.

I can still see the bloody thing in my mind, which probably says everything about the peculiar way memory works. I cannot tell you what the circus cost, what the tickets were worth, what acts we watched or whether the bloke on the trapeze was any good, but I remember that glow stick because I had managed to get my boys to the circus and then couldn’t afford the few extra dollars required to buy one of the silly things being waved around in the darkness.

The boys didn’t throw a tantrum, demand that I buy it or make me feel inadequate. In fact, they did something much worse from the perspective of the father standing there unable to afford it: they apologised for asking. They were children at a circus surrounded by other kids carrying glowing bits of plastic, and somehow they had already learned enough about our circumstances to think that asking their father for one was something for which they should be sorry.

That apology has probably stayed with me more powerfully than any tantrum ever could have. If they had carried on, sulked or complained that everybody else had one, perhaps I could have become angry with them and transferred some of what I was feeling onto two badly behaved children who needed to learn that they couldn’t always have what they wanted. Instead, they understood, as they seemed to understand far too much during that period, and their instinct was to make me feel better about being unable to give them something rather than make themselves feel worse about not getting it.

There was nowhere for the feeling to go after that except inward. They hadn’t accused me of failing them, and if anything their apology was an attempt to tell me that I hadn’t, but depression doesn’t necessarily respect the evidence presented in its defence. The accusation came entirely from inside my own head, and all these years later the memory of two boys apologising for asking their father for a bloody glow stick can still make that accusation sound remarkably convincing.

Even writing about it now can bring the pit rushing back. That is the absurdity of triggers because I am no longer the bloke at Sackville calculating whether there is enough money left after buying circus tickets to purchase a glow stick. I can afford a glow stick now, or a carton of the bloody things if some previously undiscovered need arose, but the financial circumstances of today have absolutely no authority over the memory of the father who stood there unable to buy one.

Logical Jeff can explain all of that without difficulty. He can point out that taking the boys to the circus when money was desperately tight was evidence that their father was trying to give them something rather than evidence that he was failing them. He can remind me that the boys understood, that children do not measure a father by the quantity of illuminated plastic he purchases and that no sensible assessment of my parenting would turn upon a glow stick at a circus decades ago.

None of that stops the drop.

That is why, when something goes wrong with one of my children today, the ageing rescue helicopter still wants to launch. I cannot go back and change Sackville, nor can I sensibly compensate adult children for everything I believe I might have failed to provide decades ago. What I can do is make damn sure that when one of them looks behind during a difficult time, there is somebody there offering whatever assistance or guidance I can provide.

I don’t want to be their saviour, and I certainly don’t want to deny them the right to solve their own problems, make their own decisions and occasionally make their own mistakes. Logical Jeff understands that perfectly well, just as he understands that the children survived those difficult years, grew into adults and developed lives of their own without requiring their father to hover permanently overhead. The other Jeff still remembers standing inside a circus unable to buy a glow stick, and apparently he remains ready to launch whenever there is trouble.

What I don’t want for any of them is the hopelessness I have known myself. I don’t want one of my children reaching the point where the world has closed around them and believing there is nobody standing behind them if they stumble. They still have to make their own decisions, solve their own problems and occasionally make their own spectacular mistakes, but I want them to know there is backup. That is a trigger I can at least put a name to.

Physical pain is another one, although again I am not certain whether the pain itself creates the darkness or simply removes some of the things I normally use to keep moving through it. My mind still maintains a fairly ambitious list of things my body ought to be able to do, while my body has increasingly begun exercising a veto. The disagreement between the two can become quite heated.

My approach to pain has generally been to keep going. I was brought up with the proposition that you work until the job is finished and then you rest, rather than resting because the job has become inconvenient. There have been plenty of nights and mornings when I have worked a deep-tissue massager into my lower back simply to get myself moving or, at the other end of the day, to persuade the muscles to settle sufficiently for me to sleep.

Some people might reasonably consider that approach a little silly, and they may well be right. The relentlessness of the rut creates its own logic, however, and sometimes continuing to move seems preferable to sitting still long enough to contemplate why moving has become so difficult. If the price is a stiff back or another bout of pain, I tend to classify that as a consequence rather than a reason to stop.

The problem comes when the body prevents me doing what the mind knows perfectly well I should be capable of doing. Golf, fishing, working around the house, riding the exercise bike or simply getting on with whatever needs doing all represent movement, and movement matters to me. Being physically prevented from doing something is therefore capable of producing an emotional reaction considerably greater than the pain itself might justify.

At least pain is real, and I can point to my back and identify the bastard causing trouble today. Other triggers are considerably harder to defend in court, particularly when the evidence involves something as objectively harmless as sitting in a recliner watching a movie.

Movies can get me, for example, and not necessarily the movies anybody sensible would put on a list headed Films Guaranteed to Make Grown Men Cry. A sad or unjust moment can open the pit sufficiently that I reach the point where I cannot speak without my voice betraying what is happening. When that occurs, I don’t announce it, discuss it with Robyn or undertake some therapeutic exploration of why a particular scene has affected me.

Instead, I retreat into the cocoon of my recliner and wait for it to pass. There is no conversation because, at that moment, I couldn’t open my mouth even if I wanted to without revealing what is going on, so I remain inside the shell until whatever has been stirred up decides to settle again.

The odd thing is that sadness itself isn’t necessarily enough. Old Yeller (1957 – Disney) dying doesn’t particularly affect me, which may disqualify me from several organisations devoted to the welfare of dogs, yet the scene in Stripes (1981 – Colombia Pictures) where the men talk about crying when Old Yeller died can get to me. A mule being hurt in Sergeant York (1941 – Warner Bros) can find a gap in the armour, while apparently more tragic events involving human beings can sometimes march straight past without touching the sides.

Even Men in Black II (2002 – Sony Pictures) can do it. Towards the end, when the light leaves the planet, something in that completely fictional moment can reach wherever the switch happens to be located that day. I know I am watching actors, I know somebody wrote the script, I know the special effects were manufactured and I know Will Smith is unlikely to require emotional assistance from an accountant sitting in a recliner at Smiths Lake, but none of that knowledge makes the reaction less real.

The Big Chill (1983 – Colombia Pictures) is different again because there is something recognisable underneath it. Here is a group of old school friends whose lives have gone in different directions and who come together again, carrying all the baggage accumulated since the time when they once knew each other intimately. I had friendships that felt something like that when I was younger, but without the maintenance of those relationships that the movie presents, and perhaps that difference is where some of its power lies for me.

Perhaps that explains why The Big Chill can reach me, but even that explanation is suspiciously tidy. The moment I start constructing a theory around why one movie affects me, another entirely ridiculous scene comes along and destroys the theory. Apparently the emotional filing system is happy to place a fictional mule, old school friends and extraterrestrial light in the same folder while leaving Old Yeller outside.

Iniquity seems to be part of it. Seeing somebody downtrodden by circumstances or by another person, particularly where they have done little to bring the situation upon themselves, can get under my skin in ways I find difficult to predict. It doesn’t need to be a serious drama because even a poorly written action movie can irritate me if the plot depends upon somebody being unfairly trapped by an outside influence when they were simply trying to get on with their life.

Logical Jeff can sit in the recliner and point out all the reasons the reaction is disproportionate, while depressed Jeff apparently has the remote. Knowing the scene is fictional doesn’t change the response any more than knowing a depressive thought is irrational necessarily makes the feeling attached to it disappear.

The same disproportion can emerge as anger, and this is where the search for a trigger can become part of the problem rather than the solution. If I feel lousy and cannot identify why, I search. I look for the outstanding transaction in the emotional ledger because something must surely have happened to produce the result sitting in front of me.

I can run through work, money, the children, Robyn, health, sleep and whatever else might reasonably explain the balance. Work might contain nothing unusual, the bills might all be paid, the children might be fine, there may have been no argument with Robyn and my health might be no different from yesterday. Sleep can always be blamed for something, but even that sometimes struggles to carry the weight of the prosecution case.

Eventually the search itself becomes irritating. There must be a reason because effects are supposed to have causes, and the inability to locate one begins bubbling underneath until the anger finds somewhere else to go. Sometimes the unfortunate recipient is simply some poor bastard who happens to ring at precisely the wrong moment.

The irony is that my phone these days tends to ring for work more than anything else. Somebody has a question, somebody wants something done, somebody needs an answer or somebody has encountered an accounting problem they would prefer to relocate from their desk to mine. On the wrong day, even a perfectly reasonable question can arrive sounding like one demand too many.

Lately, however, a couple of friends have started ringing simply to catch up, and I like that. I recognise it as a nice thing and know perfectly well that having somebody think, I haven’t spoken to Jeff for a while; I’ll give him a call, is something I should value. Most of the time I do value it, which makes the occasions when I don’t all the more difficult to reconcile.

At other times I can be so far down the rabbit hole that even the hand reaching down to help me out feels like an intrusion. The person at the other end has done absolutely nothing wrong and may, in fact, be offering precisely the human contact somebody looking at my situation from outside would prescribe. Yet there are moments when answering the phone and engaging in an ordinary conversation feels like another task being added to the list.

That contradiction bothers me because there is no villain available. It would be much easier if the caller were an idiot asking an idiotic accounting question because I could at least direct my irritation somewhere deserving of a small portion of it. A friend ringing because he is my friend leaves me with nowhere sensible to put the annoyance except back where it came from.

Robyn has lived alongside these undulations for long enough that there doesn’t seem to be a conversation every time one occurs. She deals with them, and I am conscious that this deceptively simple description probably conceals a considerable amount of accommodation on her part, particularly when the Jeff occupying the house on a particular day is quieter, angrier or less accessible than the one who was there yesterday.

There are times when I withdraw without actually going anywhere. The recliner can become a cocoon, the office can become another one, and even Facebook can provide somewhere to wander without requiring much engagement with the world. I can be physically present in the house while being considerably less available than my location would suggest.

The garden has increasingly become another place to go, although I am reluctant to invest the weeds with too much psychological significance. Sometimes a weed is simply an irritating plant growing where I didn’t invite it, and removing it doesn’t require Carl Jung to stand beside me interpreting the experience.

I generally start weeding with a purpose and finish when the green bin is full. Sometimes that means working methodically along a line, sometimes playing around in the vegetable patch and sometimes simply finding whatever needs doing next. There is something useful about a task where the evidence of progress is sitting in a large green bin rather than requiring an emotional assessment.

Perhaps there is an analogy in removing impediments to life, but I wouldn’t push it too far. The greater attraction may simply be that weeds obey cause and effect: I pull one out and there is one fewer weed. That is considerably more cooperative than waking up feeling black, searching for the reason and discovering there apparently isn’t one.

The tax returns this morning were finished by 7.30, the leftovers were still perfectly edible and the shower worked. The tradesman was expected to look at the guttering, Robyn’s radio was playing and nobody had rung to tell me that one of the children was in trouble. There was nothing I could point to and confidently identify as the cause, despite the part of me that wanted desperately to find one.

I could manufacture explanations if I wanted to. I could blame retirement, although I am not completely retired, or uncertainty about usefulness, physical pain, work, age, tiredness, unfinished projects, children living at a distance, friendships that disappeared or any number of things sitting somewhere in the background of my life. Give an accountant enough time and eventually he can construct a reconciliation, even if he has to create a suspense account to make the bloody thing balance.

The problem is that I no longer trust the reconciliation simply because the numbers add up. There have been days containing genuine problems when I have felt perfectly fine, just as there have been difficult periods when I have simply put my head down, dealt with what needed dealing with and kept moving. Conversely, there have been perfectly ordinary mornings when nothing objectively bad has happened and the darkness has arrived anyway.

That may be the part of depression I understand least, precisely because understanding has always been one of the ways I try to deal with problems. If I can work out what happened, I can start thinking about what to do next, but depression does not always provide enough information to complete the exercise.

It is tempting to believe that after living with it for long enough I should have developed an early-warning system. Perhaps there ought to be a dashboard somewhere with lights for financial pressure, family worries, physical pain, exhaustion, rejection and loss of purpose, with the Black Dog appearing only after three or four begin flashing simultaneously. Unfortunately, he doesn’t appear to have read the operating manual, because sometimes I recognise the footsteps and sometimes I discover he is already in the room.

There are occasions when there is a perfectly obvious reason for those footsteps, and I can look at what is happening in my life and understand why the pit has opened beneath me. There are other occasions when the apparent trigger is so trivial that even I can see the absurdity of the reaction while still being unable to stop it. Then there are the mornings when the only identifiable event preceding the darkness was that I woke up.

On those days there is nothing particularly heroic about what happens next. I don’t distrust yesterday’s good day or become frightened that tomorrow might be worse, because that would require me to spend the better days anticipating the bad ones and I have never particularly done that. I tend to let life buffet me around the walls of the tunnel and keep moving in roughly the direction in which I think the end ought to be.

There is usually some light down there eventually, and I keep heading towards it. I also retain the sensible Australian suspicion that one day it may turn out to be a freight train coming the other way, because apparently even my metaphors require a risk-management strategy.

Mostly, though, I endure it, and that word probably sounds more dramatic than the reality has become. Endurance can be remarkably ordinary when it has been practised for long enough. I get up, collect the phone, do the tax returns, raid the fridge, shower, answer some calls and perhaps ignore others, because the machinery of an ordinary day doesn’t stop merely because the bloke operating it isn’t particularly enjoying himself.

I might retreat into the recliner, wander through Facebook, head into the man cave or go outside and pull weeds until the green bin tells me the job is finished. Eventually something shifts, often without providing any more explanation for its departure than it provided for its arrival.

I don’t necessarily know what caused the darkness to arrive and I am often no wiser about what caused it to leave. That is frustrating for somebody who has spent a professional lifetime believing that if you can identify the problem, gather sufficient information and understand the variables, you ought to have at least a fighting chance of finding an answer. Depression doesn’t always offer me that courtesy, and after all these years I am increasingly reluctant to invent an explanation merely because having one would make me more comfortable.

There are times when I know there is something better somewhere ahead, or at least the possibility of something better, and that is enough to keep me bumping along the tunnel towards it. I cannot promise myself what I will find there because, after all these years, I am still not entirely sure what benchmark I am trying to reach.

That uncertainty probably says more about my relationship with depression than another list of triggers ever could. I’m not sure what happy is, but I know when I’m not it, and on some mornings I still cannot tell you why.