It's hard to write about depression especially if you don't have it. Not because you don't know or understand anything about it, but because you can only write one's pain from an audience' standpoint. Writers call it the narrator's voice. I call it honoring the past.
Depression came too late in the day for me. Past September 5, 2015 when I was struggling to pick up the pieces of what I can say the best relationship I've had with someone. I look at that past with him whimsically. And I can even handpick a memory or two from the flashes of those years, but I cannot deny myself that depression ended it. And had I known about it earlier I would have done so many things, which, in tears, I regret now.
I guess the struggle to knowing the reality of depression as a mental disease for me came along with how my mother raised me. She raised me in a strictly authoritarian rule where women run the clan with utmost grace, open secrets, and no-nonsense kitchen logic. What do you get when a Tiger Mother raised you? Of course, a Tiger Cub. I'll not deny that I have a strong personality. I could be quiet, seemingly out of the radar, but for the introvert that I am, (for the peculiarly prone to depression boy that I am) depression to me is New York to Saturn: many a mile. There is in me that cannot understand the dynamics of depression because it seemed to lock horns with how I handle myself. Sure, I've experienced being bullied in an exclusively male school. True, I've came face-to-face with domestic problem during my formative years. Yes, I once took a beating for being gay. And, what seemingly like a cherry on top of this whole train wreck, I've had HIV. So you could say I've had enough dole out from life's miseries. But some people are just too hard to bend on their knees. I'm one of them. Until the cliche of a Love came along.
The first time I laid my eyes on Depression, we were in a cemetery. It was an arranged meet up spanning three months of anonymity. My friends warned me that I may end up in a grave there in Himlayang Pilipino. I trusted my guts. Depression is this tall, geeky guy who has an immortal power of playing with words. He is a wordsmith like me. He knows how to say "I love you" in ways precum will shape itself into China in your boxers.
Depression is a quiet guy. Quieter than I am, better in words than I am, I can say. Throughout the sojourn I've had with him, I knew there was something wrong. I didn't have the faculty of words for it though. It was alarming because I couldn't withdraw a word for it from my vocabulary bank. All I know--if you may please to allow me to show, don't tell--is sometimes, Depression was: "Hun, I'm not going to work today. I'll just coop inside the house. I can do work from home." And I think that's fine, right? Depression was: "I don't celebrate birthdays. I'm not really a festive guy." I think that's okay with a dint of suspect. But Christmas? That's too buzzkill. Depression was: "It's okay. I understand." But I think he doesn't, but I'll apologize anyway because he was with me even before I entered law school so I thought he did sign up for this, right?
Wrong. Depression is a great impostor. Because while I had much misgivings, Depression showered me with so much to such a point that it was able to hide behind the mask of itself. Depression was the voice who seconded my dad about choosing a particular law school. Depression was the companion who would never mind how long the wait was at PGH-Sagip. Depression was my punching bag during those nights of obligations when he shouldn't do a thing but listen to my crappy bad recitation day. Depression is my bestfriend who would just read a book with me in a coffee shop. I took Depression at Pinto Art Museum once, and I saw the glitter in his eyes. I introduced five-foot-nine Depression to my family--from parents up to my grandmother down to my cousins--and he curled into a shy puppy. Depression hated crowds, but loved the rows of Fully Booked. Depression was mad, mad sex. Depression was HIV negative. Depression was acceptance. And I didn't have a word for it.
"Depression" was only baptized as a word only after I asked my bestfriend what went wrong between him and I. Over bottles of beers that only I swigged at, after a long litany of painful recounts, she said, "Did she check if he has depression?" I didn't know where she was going. And I think that was medically malicious of her. But my bestfriend had been clinically diagnosed with depression, saw a psychiatrist for herself, and took medicines for it for her to know if the bells are tolling. And just like the veiled disease that depression is, she kept it hidden from me because she doesn't want to make me sad. Because she hadn't had the guts to tell that she's medically depressed in the way that I had told her that I was positive of HIV. And I wept because I felt offended and hurt and pained. I wept because I finally found the realest word for it.
Looking back, I finally figured why on some days he would have this spell of melancholia. It's a pretty fancy phrase I coined when he was down and out. I finally realized why sometimes it seemed to me that his bed seemed like a blackhole he can't even get out of. I finally realized that I should have apologized when I sadistically said, "Because you know, some happy faces hide the most unspeakable sadness" (that was when he flipped open the pages of the 50th anniversary edition of James and the Giant Peach and inside are really sad and forlorn artistic renditions, notwithstanding the bright and colorful cover).
I wish there was a way to tell Joey de Leon that depression is not "gawa-gawa lang." And the support that Maine Mendoza said was not to support them to be sad all the more, but to support them towards the diagnosis and further treatment. I take a cutting offense with the mortifying remarks of these people. And I cannot laugh at their ignorance as well. There is no legitimate feeling but deep scorn for these people who never knew how amorphous depression is until it is too late, until people are hurt, until communication lines hang loose, and the elephant in the room, that "gawa-gawa lang" thing, is still sitting in that dark corner, because we never knew how to deal with it without putting shame on it, without being dismissive of it. I think between depression and those ignominous words from Joey de Leon what is more mental is the fact that people cannot see that depression is a disease, not really about how strong or weak we are in entangling ourselves from sadness, melancholy, defeat, or cloudy day.
For someone who does not know depression entirely, it's hard to write about it. So I thought it's better to paint a picture of it than to tell what I know of it, and some parts that I don't. There are still so many things to learn, and I guess one of those is the privilege to unlearn (which is a way to learn) that I do not have the self-entitlement of glorifying under other's pity just because I have HIV. Yes, I have HIV. But diseases are a spectrum of blacks and whites and grays. Depression or HIV, these shamed diseases needed to be learned more before we conveniently rely and throw in the red herrings of morality that will confound the truth and science that we all want to know.
As I type this, I texted him and asked him about what I feel and I apologized to him, and told him that had I only learned of his state, I would have been more considerate, and would have put enough courage to let my hands bleed just to peel the layers of his smiles. Just to get there. To get into that core of black and prove Mr de Leon that nothing is conveniently made up. Once, before Depression and I broke up, it came to a point where he wanted me to choose: Depression as unnamed back then or law school. I chose. And you certainly know what I chose. The choice came along with dire costs, some immediate to the heartbreak; one, tonight, through one of his replies:
I know I'm prone to depression before us. I thought I had a better handle. But I'm learning to manage it better. Or at least I try. I'm sorry I didn't carry a warning sign. You did your best despite things. I know you did. I know we did. And isn't that all that matters?
Now tell me, Mr de Leon, tell it right at the gaps of my jagged heart, if I am making up all these tonight as much as any depressed person can make up their sad stories tonight?
