By far one of the better metaphors I've read regarding depression, especially how mine affects me and those I love. Heart wrenching, but wistful and happy. It seems the author has come to terms with his fathers struggle in a way not many do. Amazing writing.
"It didn’t cure his depression, any more than you can cure a werewolf by ripping out his fangs."
I don't have the same issues as the author's father, but I've often thought of almost exactly this analogy when treating my own issues. The idea sometimes is to make the condition tolerable, and at least for me, that would be the first order of business upon learning I was a werewolf: to remove my ability to harm others while wolf-ified. This is a tremendous article, I love it and I'm going to save it and maybe read it with my dad - not because my dad is like your dad, OP, but more because a few of your experiences line up really well with a few of ours. I'll read it with my wife too, because the story of how you remember your dad when you were young - I want to be that kind of Dad to my son. So, so, so much. Except without the later issues and whatnot. I do wonder just how possible it is, but I intend to give it a shot! :)
A wonderfully written, really moving read. There isn’t enough out there that really humanizes mental illness and makes it accessible - I feel like every time I read something like this it helps me better understand my own relationship with mental illness. I just think the werewolf metaphor is dead on.
I agree that this piece is exceptionally well written!
I also just wanted to mention, if you're looking for more things that humanize mental illness, that I've been particularly impressed by the podcast The Mental Illness Happy Hour. Some episodes are better than others, but all of them give voice to deeply personal, human experiences.
Amazing piece, thank you for sharing. One bit in particular stuck out: "After all, every werewolf story also ends up with self-imprisonment—ostensibly to protect others, but really so the werewolf can protect itself from the wounds of the world."
I've always seen the story of the werewolf as an allegory for the alcoholic, and your commentary gave me a lot to think about.
This comment previously had a statement saying that there was a current of domestic violence. That is a false statement. The author was kind enough to clarify and respond in the comments below. My sincere apologies.
I am the author. There is no undercurrent of domestic violence, glossed over or otherwise, in the article.
My father had a psychotic episode once, due to a 1-in-a-million reaction he had to a misprescribed medication. My memory of this incident opens "My Father The Werewolf." During that episode, he was utterly terrified, and not in control of himself; in fact, he didn't even know who he was, or who we were. He gets a pass for it, as surely as he would get a pass if he had a stroke while driving, and consequently killed someone with his car.
Other than that one instance, my father never raised his hand to me, and I never once saw him so much as raise his voice to my mother. I even called my mom upon reading your comment and asked her if he ever touched her: she was offended by the notion.
My father was many things, not all of them good, but he was absolutely not a domestic abuser. He was the gentlest man I've ever known.
Thank you for your comment and clarification. I am sorry for the false accusation and for offending you and your mother. Forgive me for adding to the pain of your memory.
No apologies necessary! I understand that the opening of the essay has some powerful imagery that might be triggering to people with first-hand knowledge of domestic abuse. I just wanted to make sure to set the record straight, that my Dad was the victim there every bit as much as we were.
Hijacking this to say-- this was beautiful, such an intense and satisfying introspection.
Although, the hopelessness in this: "As for depression, it’s the chasm that exists between. You build your bridge, don’t look down, and pray it never swallows you, because if it does, you’ll fall forever in that bottomless gulf, and die without ever landing."
I know you don't believe it's impossible to climb out of depression... so I guess I wish there had been something at least a little hopeful to round that out.
Thank you so much for your kind words. I'm glad you found my Dad's story moving.
Like a lot of things with mental illness, I think the truth about whether depression is beatable or not is more complicated than many people's narratives let it be. It's proven that depression is cased by a combination of environmental and chemical factors, but who can say where the one begins, and the other ends?
When I was growing up, my parents were really worried about me inheriting my Dad's disease. Then, once I hit my early 20s, and started doing a bunch of things that would have been impossible for my Dad--traveling, moving abroad, earning a living as a writer, having lots of friends and girlfriends, being generally extroverted and having a good career--they started referring to me as having "dodged my Dad's genetic bullet."
But I live every day with depression. I suffer from it enough to have a regular prescription of Zoloft, and have filled out more than a handful of single-digit scoring depression screening tests over the years. There have been entire months where I have felt utterly hopeless, looking in the mirror and hating what I see.How much did I dodge a genetic bullet here? My depression is very real to me, and very hard for me to fight at times. At the same time, it's macho bullshit to say that I am "tougher" than my Dad, just because depression hasn't ruined my life. I think it's probably fairer to say that we're both right, and I'm not as depressed as my Dad, but I've also--with him as an example--set up much better habits for myself.
Treating depression isn't zero sum. You can't beat depression just by taking pills, but nor can you beat it just by riding bikes, doing yoga, or having a balanced life. You have to try everything, and maybe in trying everything, you'll find what works for you. So I think the most hope I can give on this question is this: if your depression is beatable, you can beat it. But was my Dad's depression beatable? I don't think so.
This is incredibly beautiful. I don't like to think of things as unbeatable, but I prefer to think of them as quests that the hero can't be expected to complete presently. In video games it's not at all uncommon to encounter obstacles early in the game that require items or abilities from later in the game to overcome - if later in the game is 75 years from now, there's a lot of time you have to play without getting at whatever is behind that special-item-only breakable wall.
One of my semi-secrets is that my family's struggles with Depression led me to study Neuroscience in college after almost completing a degree in German Literature. I am literally the only one of 5 siblings and my mother not to be on depression medication for at least some period of my life - I like to joke that I vampire-drained the happiness out of them and caught ADHD in doing so. I don't share that joke with them. My father is not the sort of person who would admit to depression ever, and I therefore don't know his feelings on the subject.
In other words, I quit my other program to search for the silver bullet. I knew from the start that the silver bullet is as great a fantasy as the werewolf itself, but I mourn so much for those who experience little to no improvement from our current medicines - these are the weapons I would arm people with as they fight their inner demons, no guarantee of success, but no small boon in their battle, either! Yet some people's demons clearly experience as much effect from my offered armaments as they would from a giant tickling feather - and it is to their especial detriment, because others, even doctors, seldom have understanding of their particular demon's resistance to their usual solid steel.
Someday, that holy mystery your dad recited about the brain will be as much as thing of the past as geocentrism, or so I tell myself, and so I hope, but for now, all I can do is keep fighting, I hope you're able to continue your fight with at least moderate success, as well. Of note, in my judgment, which I know is not worth much - what a laugh after all, a stranger's judgment on the internet - it seems to me that despite everything, you are doing a bang up job fighting your battle, and I hope it continues to go so well, with as few lost months and hopeless weeks or years as possible, and also, it seems to me that your Dad must have done a reasonably good job fighting his battles, as well, and I hope I am neither offensive nor cruel in saying so. It's just, it's always so difficult to judge someone, your mention about Bruce's friend who murdered his parents is quite excellent, because that question troubles and comforts many minds: Not only do I wish I were so much more, but what exactly would I be if I were so much less than I am? A murderer or serial killers? A bomber? An abusive spouse and parent? With great faith that we're not living up to our potential, staring down in the opposite direction of our potential can be harrowing but in its way, darkly comforting, even if its a sort of stupid comfort (at least, in my head and heart, I can't really claim it as a resounding accolade that "At least I wasn't a school shooter!" - yet sometimes, I just have to sit back and say it in my mind, and be thankful that I haven't gone to that extreme. It seems to me that your werewolf did a reasonable job of not eating you or your mom, even if he still wounded you with his claws over the course of his life, and I guess I wanted to offer his memory that praise).
Forgive my rambling diatribe, still lots of reflection to do on your piece, I hope you have a wonderful day. :)
Ah, the new popular concept where if you're not pointing something out constantly and disparaging it you're 'normalizing' it. What ever happened to common sense? Let alone context?
Yes, violently shaking a child is wrong and dangerous. Don't be inspired by this article folks! (Despite the fact the father's eyes were rolling back in his head and was clearly in a unstable state while this happened)
Slightly more fascinating was that was sponsored by a Boston area tech company who I know a little bit about since I interviewed there years ago. They have a cool business packaging meds for patients, aka the "pillpack". Interesting to see this as a community service project.
Just to add some context to this post: "My Father The Werewolf" was published on PillPack's in-house web magazine, Folks, which aims to tell humanist stories about people with health conditions. Folks publishes one story a day, fighting the stigma around being 'sick' by showing that managing health conditions is universal. We're fully sponsored by PillPack, which views reducing stigma around health conditions as part of its mission, but besides the mention of our parent company in the site logo (Folks, a PillPack Magazine), we don't advertise PillPack at all on our site.
I'm the editor of Folks, as well as the author of "My Father The Werewolf." Thanks to everyone who is reading the article! I'm really glad my Dad's story is moving so many people.
Yeah, I should have been clearer, I guess I think that for a community service having a magazine about "fighting the stigma about being sick" and depression, etc is really powerful and cool. Most places do nothing or support a charity (passively).
Since you're the editor, perhaps you could correct the caption on the last photo showing your Dad's friend John. "Left to Right" obviously doesn't apply to that photo.
If you asked him on any given day how he was feeling, he’d reply: “It’s the worst day of my life,” no matter whether he was comatose with depression or talking to you on your wedding day. It was almost like my dad had lost his inner compass to tell you how he was feeling: even if he acted like he was feeling better, he’d tell you he was feeling worse.
I remember feeling like that. Having a good day, or starting to emerge from a particularly deep low, suddenly you feel more intensely, and you're doing more, and you see all the lost potential of the previous days. One of the nice numbing things about depression is that nothing seems possible. You can see the difference between what's possible for you and what's possible for other people, and it's humiliating, but the idea that you could do better is a dead one with no emotional potency. Then your depression lifts a little bit, and you look back with the perspective of a slightly higher capacity to perform, and it's crushing to see the time and possibilities you wasted. It's like depression holds a little back so it can hit you one more time in the gut on the way out, to remind you that it will be back.
tl;dr ECT was used as an extreme form of treatment for major depression that had short term benefits, but ultimately resulted in a renewed version the same depressed person with damaged long-term memories, who ultimately relapsed into a depression with no obvious emotional or intellectual cause.
The subject's eventual death was natural, although arguably early, so from a ceratin point of view, maybe the treatment was at least clinically successful in warding off suicide proper.
The article deals with a lot of stuff apart from the clinical aspects of diagnosis and treatment. For example, it outlines someone who lost social connections as he grew older, a major causal factor in depression.
"...my mother told me she thought he’d known he was having heart attacks but chose to ignore them as a way of killing himself. This, I think, is putting an overly heroic sheen on it, but the interpretation doesn’t surprise me. My mother worshiped my father, and there’s something noble about a slow, plausibly deniable suicide. "
I find it to be an extreme form of cowardice. I had a couple of close family members who always used to 'emotionally blackmail' when something wasn't how they wanted it. And it wasn't manipulation - they genuinely suffered. It was horrible. Like an inescapable black cloud.
My uncle did it for so long, ignored his health issues on purpose that he eventually died. He wasn't even too old. I don't even remember exact cause, but it was something simple, couple of days in hospital and some pills would have made it go away.
I had similar inclinations, but adopting stoicism helped me curb it.
I liked the part where you call people suffering from mental illness "cowards". The part where you blithely assert some millennia-old facile philosophy can solve depression was pretty good, too.
Maybe I didn't express myself accurately (English is not my mother tongue). I don't think depression is simple thing, banality to be solved by philosophy. I don't know how you read that from my post. I said it helped me _curb_ some instincts to 'let myself go' when things aren't going my way.
Regarding 'cowards' - again, you misunderstood. I meant that people who take the slow suicide path are cowards. It's a subset of mental illnesses as a much bigger sphere.
1. It takes courage to take the blows life gives you and keep going, ("Do it for her" photo)
2. It takes courage to actively take your life, hurt yourself physically
3. It _doesn't_ take any courage to just let yourself go and fade away
The idea that suicide is selfish and cowardly is a helpful one for people who take too much responsibility onto themselves after a loved one's suicide. It's meant to balance out the perspective of people who can only see their own failure to help. It doesn't make much sense outside that context.
