Why should sliding off an icy road have precipitated Claire into this black void of despair? Many things can trigger depression. In a sense it is the common cold of emotional life. In fact, depression can literally follow in the wake of the flu. Just about any trauma or debilitating illness, especially if it lasts a long time and limits physical activity and social interaction, increases our vulnerability to depression. But the roots of serious depression grow slowly over many years and are usually shaped by numerous separate events, which combine in a way unique to the individual. In some, a predisposing shyness is amplified and shaped by adverse circumstance, such as childhood neglect, trauma, or physical illness. In those who experience manic depression, there are also genetic factors that determine the shape and course of the mood disturbance. But even there the environment plays a major role in determining the timing and frequency of illness. So the only way to understand what kindles depression is to know the life story behind it.
THE TRIP THAT WASN'T. Claire Dubois was born in Paris. Her father was much older than her mother and died of a heart attack shortly after Claire's birth. Her mother remarried when Claire was eight, but drank heavily and was in and out of hospital with various ailments until she died in her late forties. By necessity a solitary child, Claire discovered literature at an early age. Books offered a fairy-tale adaptation to the reality of daily life. Indeed, one of her fondest memories of adolescence was of lying on the floor of her stepfather's study, sipping wine and reading Madame Bovary. The other good thing about adolescence was Paris. Within walking distance were all the bookstores and cafes an aspiring young woman of letters could desire. These few blocks of the city became Claire's personal world.
Just before the second World War, Claire left Paris to attend McGill University in Montreal. There, she spent the war years consuming every book she could lay her hands on, and after college she became a freelance editor. When the war ended, she returned to Paris at the invitation of a young man she had met in Canada. He proposed marriage, and Claire accepted. Her new husband offered her a sophisticated life among the city's intellectual elite, but after only 10 months he declared that he wanted a separation. Claire never fathomed the reason for his decision; she assumed he had discovered some deep flaw in her that he would not reveal. After months of turmoil she agreed to a divorce and resumed to Montreal to live with her stepsister.
Much saddened by her experience and considering herself a failure, she entered psychoanalysis and her life stabilized. Then, at age 33, Claire married Elliot Parker, a wealthy business associate of her brother-in-law's, and soon the couple had two daughters.
Claire initially valued the marriage. The sadness of her earlier years did not return, although at times she drank rather heavily. With her daughters now growing rapidly, Claire proposed that the family live in Paris for a year. She eagerly planned the year in every detail. "The children were signed up for school. I had rented houses and cars; we had paid deposits," she recalled. "Then, one month before it was to begin, Elliot came home to say that money was tight and it couldn't be done.
"I remember crying for three days. I felt angry but totally impotent. I had no allowance, no money of my own, and absolutely no flexibility." Four months later, Claire slid off the road and into the snowbank.
As Claire and Elliot and I explored her life story together, it was clear to all that the event that kindled her melancholia was not her automobile accident but the devastating disappointment of the canceled return to France. That was where her energy and emotional investment had been placed. She was grieving the loss of the dream of introducing her adolescent daughters to what she herself had loved as an adolescent: the streets and bookshops of Paris, where she had crafted a life for herself out of her lonely childhood.
Elliot Parker loved his wife, but he had not truly understood the emotional trauma of canceling the year in Paris. And it was not Claire's nature to explain how important it was to her or to request an explanation of Elliot's decision. After all, she had never received one from her first husband when he left her. The accident itself further obscured the true nature of her disability: Her restlessness and fatigue were taken as the residue of a nasty physical encounter.
THE LONG ROAD TO RECOVERY. Those bleak midwinter days marked the nadir of Claire's melancholia. Recovery required a hospital stay, which Claire welcomed, and she soon missed her daughters--a reassuring sign that the anhedonia was cracking. What she found difficult was our insistence that she follow a routine--getting out of bed, showering, eating breakfast with others. These simple things we do everyday were for Claire giant steps, comparable to walking on the moon. But a regular routine and social interaction are essential emotional exercises in any recovery program--calisthenics for the emotional brain. Toward the third week of her hospital stay, as the combination of behavioral treatment and antidepressant drugs took hold, Claire's emotional self showed signs of reawakening.
Tags:
afflictions,
anhedonia,
depression,
emotion,
everyday experience,
everyday speech,
exhilaration,
friends and lovers,
gloom,
illnesses,
lifetime,
mania,
melodies,
mood disorders,
personal world,
social situations
