(Van Gogh's "At Eternity's Gate," painted just days before he took his own life. Picture from Wikipedia.)

If I ever write my memoir, it will be divided into two parts: B.D. and A.D.  Before Depression and After Depression.

The year-plus that I spent mired in a deep depression, in retrospect, was  like a company’s mainframe computer system crashing after years of processing corrupted data with outdated applications.  My illness was a massive rebooting involving the installation of new, sleeker software that, despite some lingering bugs, resulted in a system which the user, i.e. me, finds much more satisfying.

The B.D. version of me constantly felt like a fish out of water: an Anchor Steam in a Budweiser world, a VW in a Chevrolet world, a Jimmy Stewart in a Sylvester Stallone world. I liked foreign films, obscure music and challenging novels that reinforced my skewed vision of the world; most of my companions did not.  Nor did the women I dated.

I hid my personal quirks even though people with personal quirks were who I admired.  When I met people who shared my quirks, I often cowered, feeling unworthy.  I attempted to fit in with people even when I didn’t share their values. 

But fit in I did. I was popular and well-liked, even though I often felt like a fraud.

I was relieved when I started a family and a corporate IT career.  I was outwardly happy playing the role of the middle-class, suburban homeowner with the wife, two kids and the business card showing that I had an “important” 9-to-5 job.  But deep inside, I knew that “playing a role” was exactly what I was doing.

I started to write for my own pleasure in 2003, at age 52, and immediately felt a comfort that I never felt in other areas of my life.  It slowly dawned on me how much had been lacking in my life.  I realized that I had devoted too much of my energy to what I thought I was supposed to do, and too little to what I wanted to. I had been given one life to live and I had blown it.  

I looked into the future and saw at least another decade of the same corporate job I’d worked at for 20 years, a decade to be spent saddled with tuition bills while increasingly succumbing to the slow physical deterioration of age, leading up to a retirement of limited mobility. My spirit began to cave in.  I slogged through my days, doing what was required but feeling like a prisoner who would never qualify for parole. 

Then I got what should have been a lucky break: my division was being sold off and my job was going to disappear.  Everyone around me, mostly younger, panicked but I was secretly thrilled.  Knowing that I was approaching the minimum age for early retirement, with a generous severance package thrown in, meant that I could be paid to start my life over.  The company dangled job opportunities from other groups in front of my eyes, but I demurred.  I smelled freedom.

Then one day, as the termination date for my division fast approached, I panicked.  I accepted a job offer.  It felt like the adult thing to do.  Better the hell you know than the hell you don't know.  Co-workers clapped me on the back and shook my hand.  I wanted to vomit.

I started the new position and quickly loathed it. All of my departmental co-workers were at other locations, and there was nobody at my site to explain the new software or procedures to me.  I felt only isolation.  There was one positive to the new job: I knew, and very much liked, my new manager.  My second week with the new group, he was let go.

Now I really was a fish out of water.  I spent much of my day in hiding: the bathroom, the employee lounge, my car.  With the dwindling work force in our building, we were relocated to a small, locked area on the top floor that made me think of Anne Frank’s attic.  Where I’d always had a reasonably spacious cubicle with five-foot walls, I was now planted at a desk in an open area next to the laser printer, with people tromping by constantly.  Even whispered phone calls could be heard by my neighbors. Being extremely private by nature, I began to disconnect my desk phone for parts of each day and carry my cell phone out of the office to make most of my calls, business and personal.

I was morose at home, shunning family and friends as much as possible, indifferent to my wife’s attempts to help me. Questions were met with one-word answers or grunts.  My wife must have begun thinking about widowhood. 

I would wake up every morning at 4:00 a.m. in a cold sweat, and my first thought was, “Oh, shit, it’s another fucking day,” and I could never get back to sleep.   I wasn’t exactly suicidal, but I began hoping every ache and pain was a sign of a heart attack.  I screamed, “I wish I could have a breakdown and not deal with this,” not understanding that I already was.

Something had to break, and it finally did.  I accepted my wife’s offer of help. I began to see a therapist, began to take medication and most importantly, made financial adjustments so I could take early retirement.  I began to open up emotionally and talk about my past issues and learned that everyone feels like a fish out of water.  I slowly stopped beating myself up for past mistakes and began to laugh about my imperfections. 

My writing became more personal and more confident.  Even my wife learned things about me that she hadn’t known.  Old friends began thinking of me more as Cranky the writer rather than Richard the former co-worker.  I felt like I’d reinvented myself. Depression may have been the best thing that ever happened to me.

I still struggle occasionally.  I have days when I’m mired in a blue funk.  I’ve had a couple of mini-relapses that have dragged on for a week.  I still occasionally wake up in the wee hours in a cold sweat.  But I’ve been there before, I’ve felt the hopelessness of that deep, dark abyss and I have no desire to visit there again.  I know now to reach out my hand and say, “Help.”

Finally, in contradiction of all expectations, last week I began to send out my resume, looking for a job in my old line of work.  Frankly, we could use the money.  It’s a bad time to look for work, of course, and my skills are a little rusty, but I’m not in a hurry.  I’m willing to do it because I’m no longer that B.D. version of me who felt like a fish out of water.  This A.D. guy is comfortable in his own skin.