Capture by David A. Kessler M.D

Author:David A. Kessler, M.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

The woman’s imagined corpse, discovered again and again in alternate scenarios, is detailed with flies. The cat nibbles on toes.

Is it possible to hate yourself to death? If it is, I’m trying . . .

In my conversations with the author, Ware describes his experience with depression as physical and emotional: “It sets in the bones, in a way. There’s something of a heaviness, or a leadenness in the limbs and in the joints. It’s almost like a hopelessness that spreads from your toes upward. You’d think it would be the other way around. This sounds really embarrassing, but the phrase ‘sad wall’ comes to my mind. I don’t understand why. It’s like I’ve hit a wall, literally, going at a certain speed. It overwhelms me to the point where I almost can’t move.”

It can last, he says, anywhere from a day to weeks at a time. But that understanding of a finite duration, a prognosis that experience knows to be limited, is not accessible to the mind in the midst of it. You can’t see over the sad wall. “When you’re in the bubble of despair, you just feel like, ‘Oh yeah, this is it. How am I going to find my way out of it? I never will. I’ll be here forever.’ And then when you’re out of it you’re like, ‘That was too bad. Well, hopefully that won’t ever happen again.’” It’s a lesson that he never fully learns, for reasons that he doesn’t understand. He jokes that he should print a laminated card, inscribed, “Get ready. It’s going to come back and you will forget how horrible it is.”

Chris acknowledges that his work serves as both the most common trigger for his episodes of depression and the readiest antidote. His resolve to continue making art is a mark of inner resources that have carried him safely through past episodes of depression. Whether putting himself through the public paces that his career prescribes or mining his most troubling memories for material, he exhibits a resilience that belies his trumpeted self-doubts. Chris notes that he has never been hospitalized for depression or taken medication for it, despite the recommendations of doctors, and says that his condition has never been as profoundly debilitating as that of others he has observed.

“Part of the solipsistic ridiculousness of it is that I’ve spent most of my life trying to figure it out within my own artwork, and of course it brings it on at the same time, but I’ve thought a lot about my childhood and my upbringing and my experiences.” He describes his early life as confounded by uncertainties: his father’s abandonment even before his memory registers and the ensuing open questions of self-blame; the subsequent paternal figures as initially unknown quantities; being uprooted from his childhood home at a critical point in adolescence; the casual cruelty of inconsistent friends. Much of his emotional turmoil arose in the aftermath of failed relationships, “where you wake up in the morning for a second

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.