Gray Clouds: Diagnosed and depressed in the Emerald City

April 18, 2017May 17, 2017 Joseph Lyttleton

Chapter VII

[What’s in a name? Well, whatever it is, some of these names are made up.]

Seattle is a dichotomous city: Hills and valleys, waterways and mountain ranges, limitless summer sun followed by an oppressively gray winter. Fun fact: Seattle’s annual rainfall doesn’t even put it in the top 20 of US cities, but from late October to April, the skies are shrouded in a blanket of drizzling clouds trapped overhead by the Cascades.

I arrived in the heart of summer, filled with optimism for the future of my project. This uncharacteristic positivity was in large part due to the pending publication of a Washington Post article I’d written about the financial travails of my travels. Though personal finance was the least interesting part of my project to me, when the opportunity to write a feature article for a national publication presents itself, a fledgling writer jumps at the opportunity.

The patron of my opportunity was Marianne, a friend since college who at the time was designing at the Post and had put the idea in the ear of an editor. Marianne and I have the type of friendship in which we catch up infrequently, but always with ease and an appreciation for our mutual side-eyed view of our lives. She’d witnessed and supported 10 Cities/10 Years essentially since its conception.

The featured article, complete with photo spread, provided my first taste of wide exposure and brought a flood of attention. The online comment section was divided evenly between those expressing admiration for my goal, people calling me an idiot, and pedants crowing about a typo. Truly, it had reached every demographic.

I rode the high of having my first major publishing credit for a few weeks, which led to local interviews with radio and digital publications and hearing from people who I hadn’t spoken to since high school. I was even recognized by a stranger on the street. Fame!

Luxuriating in the moment, I reunited with Ashley, yet again. As geographically removed as we had ever been, we still couldn’t resist each other. Her absence from my life left gnawing emptiness. She flew out and together we ascended the Space Needle, visited the aquarium, attended a Ryan Adams concert, and spent the still warm evenings huddled in dark booths. We didn’t even fight, a true rarity for us.

Our third go-round lasted only two months.

For years, Ashley had ridden the ups and downs of my sporadic attention, tolerating an art project that she didn’t understand and I couldn’t justify. Whatever she saw in me, whatever drew us together, it was in spite of my single-minded dedication to art, not because of it. All she wanted was a family and a home near her parents and I, well, I couldn’t say what I wanted. But it wasn’t in North Carolina.

When I ended it for the third time, it was with the understanding that there wouldn’t be a fourth. As long as we were holding on to the possibility of reconnecting someday, we’d both be miserable. And so, with an eviscerating finality, it was over.

Oscillation

I told the doctor everything.

It was mid-January and I had returned to familiar territory: jobless and scrambling to put together enough income to make it another month.

In the wake of yet another break up and the rapidly dwindling interest of the public for 10 Cities/10 Years, my mental state had taken another precipitous drop. My circumstances didn’t help. Weeks before Christmas, my coworkers at Levi’s and I learned that our store was closing in January.

With the winter months a job desert, I responded to an online posting for a medical study. Déjà vu, all over again.

The psychologist, Dr. Alden, explained that they were studying the efficacy of a new anti-depressant. I had never taken any medication for my depression (self-diagnosed in high school, and confirmed every year of my life afterwards), but I was in a low place, and Seattle’s unvarying gray skies only made matters worse. I couldn’t keep fighting my brain chemistry unarmed.

For an hour and a half, I shared: career missteps, romantic failings, family history, and the current uneasy state of my nomadic existence. I checked off almost every box for depression – trouble sleeping, lack of appetite, suicidal ideations, loss of interest in activities, repetitive negative thoughts – and looked to be an ideal subject for the study. One thing gave her pause: my drinking.

“If I put you on this drug, you’ll have to cut out all alcohol. Is that something you think you can do?”

I paused a beat before saying, “Of course.” She must have known it was a lie, but she pushed ahead anyway.

Having reached the conclusion of my interview, she was preparing to sign off on my admission to the study when an off-hand comment made her go back to her notes. Earlier, I had mentioned feeling more buoyant in the sunnier months. She quickly flipped back through her folder.

She read off a series of questions.

Do I have periods where I feel sped-up? Do I rapidly swing back and forth between extremes of self-confidence and self-doubt? Does my libido increase dramatically in happier phases? Is my creativity affected?

The interview went on like that for a few more minutes, with me answering in the affirmative for nearly every inquiry. When she had read through the full list, she looked up at me, sighed, and informed me, “I can’t add you to the study.”

The medication was intended to treat clinical depression, which I’d always assumed I had. Instead, she explained, my symptoms suggested Bipolar II (typified by hypomanic phases instead of the more erratic manic episodes of Bipolar I).

Her diagnosis, cursory though it might have been, provided two strands of relief. Firstly, having a framework to describe the oscillating swings of mood and personality that had dictated my identity since I was a teenager helped me feel that I was no longer at the whim of some unknowable trickster god. I could understand my cycles, and therefore, myself.

The other source or relief: since I wouldn’t be in the study, I didn’t have to give up drinking.

Dahlia

Even without a job, I refused to spend every night locked up in my room. About once a week, I met my former coworker, Albert, at the Rabbit Hole, a cocktail bar less than ten minutes’ walk from my Belltown apartment. Sometimes we played a few abysmal rounds of trivia or a couple games of skeeball. Behind the bar was an alluring and statuesque Venus who Albert swore he’d marry one day, just as soon as she knew his name.

One February evening, while sitting at the bar, a short, young woman, plainly dressed, took the stool next to me. I’m not usually one to chat up a stranger (strangers generally approach me) but the whiskey had me feeling outgoing so I introduced myself. By chance, she was a visitor from Pennsylvania, traipsing through the Pacific Northwest on her own. We had an immediate rapport and began exchanging travel stories.

With a knowing look, Albert excused himself, leaving me alone with my new companion, Dahlia.

After a couple more drinks, I offered to give her the almost-local tour. From the Rabbit Hole, we walked a half mile through the cooling evening towards downtown Seattle to try Von’s, a garish cocktail lounge where they spin a wheel on the wall every half hour to determine what the current special will be. It’s usually some variant of martini in the $4 to $5 range.

Topics flowed with ease as we rapidly progressed through family, career, past travel, and even former relationships. We shared a restless worldview and waxed sibyllicly of the locales we would one day explore. A half dozen drinks into the night, we finished our discount martinis and ordered another. The quiet inner monologue that grows ever more insistent with alcohol was screaming that this was going somewhere.

Leaving Von’s, I offered to bring her to the Space Needle. It had grown late and the iconic site would be lit up brightly against the dark clouds. Like me, Dahlia preferred walking to taking a car, and since Seattle is deceptively small, we continued our evening with a mile-long stroll back through Belltown.

Conversation started to taper off during the walk, either because we had exhausted all obvious roads or because the alcohol had chemically transformed from social lubricant to depressant. Nearing the Space Needle, we stopped into Seattle’s beloved 24-hour diner, the 5 Point Café, for another round.

Dahlia made a point of mentioning that she was staying at a hostel, though she wasn’t quite sure where it was in relation to our current location. Sitting on those black vinyl stools, confident that I had accumulated enough evidence to know where this was going, I leaned in to kiss her.

Abruptly, she rebuffed me before I made contact. I retracted, stunned and ashamed. It certainly wasn’t the first time I’d had a kiss rejected – whiskey isn’t just a social lubricant – but each time, it’s always deeply embarrassing. No means no, infinitum: I apologized and hoped to salvage the night by changing the subject.

I suppose the rejection – or, from her perspective, the intrusion – had irreparably shifted the tone of the evening, because the conversation quickly soured.

Slipping through an alcoholic black hole, I emerged on the other side firmly enmeshed in a heated debate with Dahlia about moral relativism. I’ve no memory of how the conversation began, but with each passing exchange, our volume increased in inverse proportion to our civility.

She argued that no person or society has the right to dictate to any other person or society their moral values. I took the, perhaps, more provincial view that a society – and by extension, humanity – could not function if we did not enforce some sort of moral code.

I assume we’re all familiar with Godwin’s Law.

“You would let the Nazis kill the Jews?” This inarticulately worded question seemed like the logical conclusion of her position, and I assumed the only possible response was “no.” I assumed wrong. “You would let the Nazis kills the Jews!” I repeated, this time not a question, but an accusation.

She held steadfast while my mind locked onto that one phrase like a glitching robot trapped in an inescapable loop. With deepening incredulity, I rebutted her every point with that refrain, until, finally, pissed off and not a little drunk, she stormed off to the restroom.

Ten minutes passed before I concluded that she had, in fact, exited 5 Points, leaving me with the bill and a hazy understanding of how the night had flipped so dramatically, so quickly.

And then the skies began to clear.

Seattle’s shifting weather mirrored my mental oscillations, and either because of that or despite it, the city remains among my favorites of the ten years.

Friendships made a big difference. One couple, Clarice and Tom, welcomed me into their home frequently and introduced me to varied and fascinating people, including Rhiannon, with whom I enjoyed burlesque shows, speakeasies, and casual misanthropy.

My two month job search ended in March when I found one of the most laidback and lucrative waiting jobs I ever had, bartending on Blake Island for visitors to Tillicum Village and the customers of Argosy Cruises. My young and sprightly coworkers often complained about working hard (we never did), and in their company I felt like an elder statesman, having lived a thousand different lives. I could have lived in that summer feeling forever, but I had more roads ahead.

With my exit a week away, my coworker, Brielle – an inveterate hostess – threw a raucous going away party at her apartment. Having seven cities in the books, I felt like a man on a victory tour. In two years I’d be in New York, and before that, all I had to do was live it up in New Orleans and Boston.

Little did I know that an old face from Chicago was about to blow everything up.

It was Seattle in late August; I couldn’t see them yet, but clouds were on the horizon. They always are.

Keep reading: Chapter VIII – New Orleans

Teachable Moments: The Fragility of Manhood

February 7, 2017February 7, 2017 Joseph Lyttleton

I’m roughly a third of the way through my TEFL Certification course with ITA. The course is designed to prepare students to teach English in a variety of classrooms, both traditional and nontraditional, as well as to work as a private tutor. As I read about different teaching philosophies and method, I can’t help but think about my own experiences as a student.

This particular story isn’t about how a teacher inspired me, or about an innovative teaching style. This is a story about a teacher speaking to his class in an unexpected and, ultimately, sad moment.

(Warning: There is use of a particular slur in this story that some will find offensive.)

When we entered after lunch, Mr. Capp* was at the front of the class as usual, standing straight up in pressed slacks, a button-up shirt, and a solid green tie. He neither dressed formally in suits like Mr. Harkins, the civics teacher, or casually in short-sleeved polos like Mr. Wells who taught English and coached girls’ tennis; he taught Senior Psychology. Having entered into his 30s with an unassuming handsomeness, he watched us in silence.

Of my non-Humanities classes. Psychology was by far my favorite, an interest that would carry on into college. Two sections were of particular interest, the first on human sexuality and the other Depression-related disorders. Mr. Capp approached both subjects with professional nonchalance, covering subjects like homosexuality and suicide – delicate topics in any high school, let alone in the Midwest – with the same matter-of-factness as Ms. Pohl explaining vectors. As his sartorial choices suggested, Mr. Capp straddled the line between Student’s Buddy and Strict Mentor. He knew how to engage with students, but he would commonly remind us that we were seniors and that meant we needed to act like upperclassmen. He had no patience for laziness or entitled students.

This particular Tuesday, he was uncharacteristically tightlipped as we streamed in.

Two weeks prior, in a discussion on gender norms, Mr. Capp had given a remarkably sympathetic and forward-thinking lecture, espousing the potentially controversial stance that one’s biological sex must not necessarily determine one’s gender or how one expressed it. To illustrate this theme, he split the class up into a male and female group and then had the groups compete in a series of stereotypically gender-specific tasks, such as running in heels and throwing a football. The catch was that the teams picked which member from the other team would compete in each activity.

Being a mostly anonymous student at the school, I assumed (and hoped) I would be able to ride out the whole competition in the background. To my great chagrin, I was chosen to participate in one event: I had to fasten a hinge between two blocks of wood. Apparently the ladies had figured I might not be the “manliest” kid in the class – perceptive, these ones. Their astute observation paid off as I was defeated handily by my female competitor. If it was any consolation to my team, the guys did win the high heels race.

Despite my embarrassment – and I was still young and insecure enough for the loss to feel deeply shameful – I enjoyed the section and found the topic to be reassuring.

This is what made the strange occurrence in Mr. Capp’s class that Tuesday all the more confusing. With all the students settled into their seats, Mr. Capp remained briefly silent. This was already an odd start since he was not one to waste any of the class period. We had just started the section on Bipolar Disorder, but when he finally did speak, it was not to begin the lecture.

“Last night, after school let out, I went to visit my mother.” I think most of us assumed Mr. Capp was telling us a story to illustrate the lesson. We quickly realized that wasn’t the case. “While I was in her house, some coward vandalized her property.” I don’t recall now if he actually said the word or merely suggested it, but either way, we all knew what had happened: Someone spray-painted the word ‘faggot’ on his mother’s driveway. “We know it was a student and the police will be thoroughly investigating.”

He continued through contained rage on the subject of respect and maturity. The entire class listened with the kind of rapt attention most teachers could only dream of. The speech Mr. Capp delivered probably only lasted five minutes, but it felt like it took up the whole class. There was undeniable fury seething behind Mr. Capp’s stony expression, his commitment to total professionalism losing out to filial devotion. He tried to focus his anger through derision, mocking the perpetrator for being dumb enough to not even graffiti the right house, but there was no mirth in his tone.

Then the venting took an unexpected turn.

“If there’s anyone here who questions whether I’m a man, we can go outside right now and I’ll prove it. Are you man enough to fight me? Or just a coward vandalizing an old woman’s house in the dark?” It would have been laughable if it hadn’t been stated with such virulence.

What were we supposed to make of this bizarre presentation? How could someone who had just weeks earlier taught us that gender norms were a societal construct now face us and insist that he would defend his manhood through the most banal display of machismo?

The simplest answer is that sometimes we can know something intellectually but not internalize that knowledge. In heightened emotional states, in those moments when we need them the most, we rarely maintain our grasp on our ideals. The whole display – his anger, his barely maintained façade, his hypocrisy – was in its own way one of the most profound lessons I’ve ever received.

It didn’t take long for someone to find the ID of a student in the lawn of Mr. Capp’s mother. It belonged to Brady, a rich kid who no one seemed to actually like yet who occupied the center of the most popular social circle, an argument for class privilege if you ever needed one. One of those seniors who intended to ride out his final year in pud classes, it’s no surprise that Brady ran afoul of Mr. Capp and bristled at being asked to put in actual effort.

As Seniors, we thought of ourselves as the elder statesmen, but Brady proved, we were still just kids.

I have no idea if Mr. Capp still teaches or whether anyone ever took him up on his challenge. I also don’t know what happened to Brady, though I suspect very little in terms of punishment or lasting consequence. Despite the disheartening display that Tuesday afternoon, I still think of Mr. Capp’s class as one of the most influential factors in my educational path, one that included many more psychology courses and has continued well beyond the formal classroom.

I wonder if Mr. Capp still thinks back on that day; if so, does he regrets his words? Maybe he’s ashamed, or maybe he feels it was justified. Perhaps, due to cognitive dissonance – a concept I’d only study later in my college psych courses – he has somehow mentally rearranged the incident into something heroic or even noble, crafting a personal narrative in which he stood before his classroom and displayed the model of an enlightened, post-gender male. I’ll never know. It doesn’t matter.

It might be strange to say this but, I actually did learn a lot from this experience. It was the beginning of a long arc for me, coming to terms with my own idea of masculinity and strength. It’s a lesson we continue to learn every day, as Mr. Capp proved.

It’s also a reminder that, whether in front of a classroom or tutoring a student one-on-one, any moment as a teacher can be significant.

*All names are made up.

[“Calvin and Hobbes” created by Bill Watterson.]

Why Do We Seek Labels?

January 8, 2015February 12, 2015 Joseph Lyttleton281 Comments

It’s almost a daily occurrence now. On Facebook or Twitter, in an article or mind-numbing listicle, someone is discussing the traits, burdens and/or pleasures of being an introvert. Based on the unscientific sampling of my personal feed, 90% of the narcissistic self-promoters in the world are actually meek and shy introverts.

When us loners aren’t breathlessly talking about how weird it is that we prefer books to people (haha, I’m soooo crazy!), we’re posting the results of a Briggs Myers personality test (or some generic knockoff).

“I’m totally an INFP.”

“Well, I’m an ENFJ.”

“Oh, I could definitely see that. I guess that’s because I’m an ENTP.”

“I kind of figured all of you were CUNTs.”

And when we get bored with scientific classifications that mostly mean nothing, we fall back on the original sugar pill of personality labels: The Zodiac.

What’s Your Sign?

How is it that a generation raised on “Be Yourself” entertainment is so obsessed with conforming to labels? How can we, on one hand, talk so much about how our race, gender and sexuality doesn’t define our potential and value, and then turn around and say without a trace of irony, “Oh, I’m a Cancer, that’s why I’m so emotional”? Why are we so in need of being sorted?

Hate to break it to you, but you aren’t Harry Potter.

I realize that most people who read horoscopes don’t put much faith in them. They read them for entertainment, they read them because they’re bored, or they read them because it’s fun to see how they match up with their lives. But, like the lapsed Catholic who still crosses himself before entering a scary, black basement, there is an ounce of belief in these people.

It’s not faith in the Zodiac (though, obviously, there are people who truly and fully believe in the bunk), but rather a kind of desperate hope that there could be some truth in the predictions. If the horoscope is true, if the Briggs Myers is accurate, if Muhammad is the Prophet, then there is understandable order in the universe.

There isn’t. At least, not in the way you want.

IntroPerversion

Being an introvert can be great. (Except when it’s not.) There is no question that I fit the label. I fit many labels. I’m shy, I’m pensive, I’m a Wallflower, I’m serious, melancholy, calculating. (Except when I’m not.) I am many things that are really just synonyms for the same trait, which is [fill-in-the-blank].

I imagine, though, that being an extrovert must be pretty great, too.

Except when it’s not.

We have an unhealthy compulsion to be categorized. I don’t like to say, “Because of the internet…” since that’s a very myopic way of looking at the world. I don’t think the internet is fundamentally changing us so much as it’s allowing us to more fully reveal the truest human nature. That said, because of the internet, we are becoming more and more obsessed with telling other people what our label is, presumably so they’ll better understand and accept us.

Am I too quiet? Well, don’t be mad at me, I’m just an introvert.

Am I not assertive enough? That’s just my personality trait, I’d rather create than control.

Am I bad in bed? Must be because you’re a Gemini.

We’re so scared of admitting our failings – of admitting that being less than perfect isn’t a quirk but a reality – that we seek a label for every single possible human personality.

I’m guilty, as well. I am bi-polar. Mostly it’s an affliction I have to deal with to get through day-to-day life and I don’t tend to talk about it in my real world life.* I rarely tell co-workers and don’t bring it up with friends and roommates unless I think they’re someone who will appreciate the conversation, usually because they have a similar struggle. I don’t want to be defined by my condition.

Except when I do. Because at times I do want to wrap myself up in the label. I want to use it as an excuse so that all my worst behaviors and traits can be written off and forgiven. I want permission to be weak.

We are all weak at times, and in those low moments we seek the comforting reassurance that it’s not our fault, not our responsibility. It’s just our nature.

That might be true, but what of it? There are positive traits and there are negative traits. There are qualities to be celebrated and qualities to be corrected. And then there are traits and qualities that just exist, neither good nor bad. I think of it (as I do most things) in evolutionary terms: There is no right or wrong way to be, generally, but there are traits that are more beneficial for particular circumstances.

I have great qualities for being a writer. I have lousy qualities for being a pop singer (even if I do have an ass like Nicki Minaj).

Our incessant need to label ourselves speaks to a great insecurity within us. Maybe it’s because of the constant bombardment of celebrity news and digitally-manipulated images, or maybe that insecurity always existed and the internet is just allowing us to admit it.

Either way, it’s a sickness. Not the insecurity. Insecurities can actually be a gift, a reminder that we are not done yet, that we can always do more to improve ourselves. No, the sickness is the desire to label ourselves, to say, “This is who I am so deal with it.” There are more than 7 billion people on this planet. If the world doesn’t want to “deal with it” they’ll just ignore you, like I imagine most of your friends on Facebook already do.

Nobody cares if you’re an introvert, an INTJ or a Taurus.

We only care what you actually do. So close the Buzzfeed quiz and go create something of lasting value.

*I use this space to talk about my condition on occasion because I want people to understand it, and I want people who are dealing with the same problem to have a place to feel less alone.

Change In America

October 8, 2014June 29, 2015 Joseph Lyttleton2 Comments

The United States in the 21^st Century is fundamentally different than when it was the preeminent, ascendant world power of the 20^th century. It would be simple to point to one or two major events as the catalysts for this change (9/11, the Great Recession, Barack Obama’s election), but in reality the world is in a constant state of flux and the status quo never lasts long.

I have known conservative religious types to warn of the danger of Same Sex Marriage by claiming that ancient Rome’s embrace of homosexuality heralded their downfall. Besides nicely illustrating the causation/correlation conflation fallacy and showing a complete lack of historical literacy, this thinking also illustrates our most common myth about reality. People are prone to believe that their present moment in history is the default, and any deviation from their norm is an affront, when in fact it’s inevitable.

Change is the constant. One of the failings of the environmentalist movement is that in their urgency to warn of Global Warming-caused catastrophes, they initially fell back onto the easy, grabby language of World Ending Apocalypse. The world isn’t ending, but it is changing, a fate that means very little to the planet Earth, but should prove a real boon to Slip N’ Slide sales in Alaska.

We Need Change

The ideas which are holding back or actively dragging down society can be traced to one terrible piece of reasoning: “It’s what I’ve always believed.”

The country I have come to know intimately is one that can be hard to love at times. Overt anti-science, anti-intellectual, sexist and homophobic public policies and talking points are easy targets for Jon Stewart or John Oliver to lampoon, but far subtler, less political strands of these worldviews inhabit average people in ways that are harder to extract from their, otherwise, fundamental decency. Good people can have lousy beliefs, especially if they’ve never had a reason to question them. It’s simple to think that everyone protesting against same sex marriage or outside Planned Parenthood is just a religious fanatic, but I was maybe five or six the first time I carried a sign in a “Pro-life” march. I didn’t know what I opposed (or supported), and it wasn’t until I was well into my 20s that I thought back on those days with any embarrassment.

Some people never examine their beliefs. That is a shame and the reason why ignorant, hateful people are so prominent in our society (well, that and because controversial statements make nice headlines). We of the “educated, liberal” persuasion shake our heads at others for their backwards beliefs, and yet it’s among liberal enclaves that pseudo-scientific (not scientific at all, actually) idiocy runs most rampant, from the Anti-Vaccine movement to whatever miracle vitamin Dr. Oz is peddling this week. No political, religious or social group holds a monopoly on bad ideas and ignorance.

The oft-ignored extension of the “some people don’t examine their beliefs” rule is that nobody examines all of their beliefs. When Descartes famously stated “I think, therefore I am,” he coined the definitive statement of Rationalism, but his hyperbolic doubt remained credulous about one central belief: God. Even the forefather of rational skepticism had his blind spots, is it any surprise that the rest of us are no better at scrutinizing our beliefs? Another great philosopher, Dr. Gregory House, once bellowed, “Climb out of your holes people!” but we live in holes and nobody wants to be homeless.

We Hate Change

It is quite possible that people seem angrier and more miserable today because the internet allows us to vent more freely and, thus, the dickish thoughts that we always had but kept to ourselves are now coming into the open. This view suggests that humanity isn’t growing shittier, we’re just more open about our fecal tendencies. I like this interpretation because it jives with the underlying optimism I hold for the human race (even if I’m pessimistic about individuals).

However, it’s hard to ignore the police killings of innocent teenagers and the increased mass shootings, along with the corruption at every level of power, both political and financial. The world may be less violent over all than at any other time in human history, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t still acting like savages.

I would argue that if there is one underlying cause for so much of the malignant behavior in our society, it’s change. Rapid, unstoppable change. The last 50 years has produced more social upheaval than almost all of human history before it. For 20 years, we have been in a technological explosion like no one’s ever seen. When Gene Roddenberry envisioned the 23rd century in the original Star Trek, it didn’t look all that much different from the world we inhabit in the second decade of the 21st century (minus the space travel; though that may not be far off). In our time, cultural revolution is more pronounced in one year than it was in entire decades of the previous century.

As the old axiom goes, nobody likes change. Sure, some people embrace new things more readily than others, but even for a guy who has made a life of moving from city to city, I’m not always receptive to shifting sands. We are especially unhappy when a change occurs without our input or permission.

I don’t mean to deny individual autonomy because we are all ultimately responsible for our actions, but I think the depletion of civility and society’s rapid transformation are more than casually linked. I don’t have any studies to support that hypothesis (better minds than mine would have to devise ways to test it), but it’s no stretch to suggest that big changes often have unexpected consequences. If the Civil Rights movement of the 60s was met with fierce opposition, is it any wonder that there is so much turmoil in the wake of social changes that include race, gender and sexual orientation in one massive tsunami? The United States isn’t so much a melting pot as a churning caldron.

There’s no returning to the status quo. Which status quo would that even be?

We Has Change

Will our society continue to evolve this dramatically and this abruptly from here on out? Most experts predict a technological plateau at some point, but since we’re experiencing a period like none other in human history, it’s really anybody’s guess. The concept of the ‘Technological Singularity’ suggests that there’s an endpoint for both human and technological evolution, but how far off is that? Could there be a ‘Societal Singularity’?

Whatever comes next for America, we should expect it to be met with challenges. It’s easy to get frustrated if you’re fighting for civil rights and facing backlash. It can be just as frustrating to be passionate about something, anything, and find nothing but hate and abuse thrown back at you. But take solace: if the world seems especially brutish to you, consider that these may be the growing pains of a society rapidly exploding through puberty. Awkward, ugly puberty.

And if that’s the case, maybe a stable, humane adulthood is still ahead of us.

Winter Comes to Boston

December 17, 2013December 17, 2013 Joseph Lyttleton

After living the previous 3 years in cities that experience winter in name only, this year finds me in a city that just had its first notable snowstorm. Snow is piled up in ghost white mounds and car owners are digging their vehicles out with shovels and fits of frustration. Deep puddles fill my Sambas with icy water when I miss a step and my nose drips with the coercion of whipping winds. The last time I felt this type of weather, I was living in Chicago and I wasn’t even halfway through with this project.

Now I’m a year out from reaching the horizon.

It’s good to be cold. It’s good to be uncomfortable, to feel the pain of cracked skin and chapped lips. It’s good to feel the tears well in your eyes from the sheer force of nature’s chill. And it sucks all the same.

For, it has begun again. It didn’t come on as early as some years, and it hasn’t struck with the same debilitating sweep that it did last year, but it’s here all the same. Gray skies, bundled bodies and frosty air are a sharp knife for a person with seasonal affect disorder, all the more so when it’s part of the larger cycle of bipolar disorder.

I feel the desire to push people away, to get quiet, shut out and shut down, sitting like an audience member shouting at the screen, “Don’t go in there!” The mind is a sordid bitch.

Oh well.

I’m okay. You’re okay?

I know what this is. I know what this will be. I know that it’ll be here for a while, then it won’t, then it will again, then… ad nauseam. So it goes.

I don’t know what will come of it this year, what bridges I’ll burn, who will avert their gaze, who will shrug and bury it. It’s not always who you expect, it’s not always who you hope…

It’s winter in Boston. There’s snow on the ground, and though some days will be warmer than others, with occasional sunlit interludes, I know there will be more snow to come, more clouds, more days-like-night. We live in cycles.

So it goes.

A photo of Martin Manley, a Kansas City sportswriter who blogged about his suicide.

“My mom said I was always a happy baby.” The Suicide of Martin Manley

August 19, 2013August 11, 2022 Joseph Lyttleton

[This post obviously deals with suicide. Do not read on if the subject makes you uncomfortable.]

Martin Manley killed himself.

This in and of itself isn’t so unique. Thousands of suicides happen without much notice. Manley was a public figure, a former sports writer for the Kansas City Star and editor for the website Sports In Review. However, what makes his suicide bizarre is that he created a website (no longer active; going to the URL now could subject you to a virus) to explain his reasons for his actions. The final thing he wrote was a post for SIR.

In his final post, Manley explains:

The reason for my departure is 100% within my ability to control. You see, earlier today, I committed suicide. I created a web-site to deal with the many questions a person would rightfully have. It’s called martinmanleylifeanddeath.com. It went live today. In my opinion, there is no question which you could conceivably ask that I have left unanswered on that site. My goal with this post is closure for SIR.

Martin Manley shot himself in front of a police station. His final post touched on some of his reasons, but mostly he seemed to just want to put everything in order. The website he created was split into 2 categories, ‘Life’ and ‘Death.’ I won’t try to summarize or pull quotes. There was too much there to be crammed into a single blog post. The man laid bare his entire existence, from beginning to end, and if people are interested, there are mirror sites where people can still read his writings.

There are two reasons this story caught my eye (besides for the sensational angle of it):

First, he was from Kansas. He says that he lived in Topeka and then moved to Overland Park. Both of these cities are about 30 minute drives (in opposite directions) from my hometown of Lawrence. While I haven’t lived in Kansas in years and I was never one to read sports stories in the newspaper, I have to imagine that I have a lot of friends and old acquaintances that were familiar with this man, maybe even regular readers.

Secondly, there was something he wrote in his Pictures section of the site:

These are pictures of me when I was around one. My mom said I was always a happy baby. It seems odd to me that would be the case considering I’m not sure I ever really learned what happiness was as an adult.

Emphasis mine. That really stuck out to me, because my mother has said the same thing of me. She says I was her “sunshine baby.” This has always struck me as odd because for as long as I can remember, I have dealt with depression. I’m sure for anyone who has dealt with lifelong depression it’s hard to remember a time when you could be roundly described as “happy.”

If this story blows up, and it likely will because of its odd, viral nature, it will almost certainly spur a conversation on suicide. I hope it does. But if the comments on related articles are any indication, the conversation may get buried in dross. As soon as a public suicide hits the internet, the opinions start flying: People should be allowed to kill themselves. People who commit suicide are idiots. Only God can help you fight depression.

Everyone brings their preconceived ideas to the topic and nothing of importance ever gets discussed. The conversation takes bunny trails off into topics such as “Is depression genetic?,” “Is suicide wrong?,” and “Is there a God?” Personal agendas get brought in and pretty soon no one is talking about what really matters: How do people who have suicidal thoughts cope?

There is no single answer for everyone, and I don’t feel like getting into my personal beliefs on the topic. (I’ve done so elsewhere.)

It’s that phrase that keeps coming back to me: “My mom said I was always a happy baby.” We all have loved ones in our life and we think we know them, we think that we know what they’re capable of. Part of the reason that suicides so often take us by surprise is that most of us pride ourselves on being perceptive, at least when it comes to the people in our lives.

The TV show House M.D. had an episode where a main character committed suicide. At the time, there was considerable online chatter about whether it was just for shock, many arguing there was no hint that the character was going to do it. But, as unexpected as the episode was for me, it also struck me as incredibly true. My own personal experience of suicide was with someone who I (and, I imagine, most of the kids who knew him) thought was the happiest, most well-adjusted person.

I wasn’t familiar with Manley. I’m sure as people unpack his website and his backlog of articles things will come out that will make his suicide “obvious” and easy to predict in that perfect 20/20 hindsight sort of way. And maybe he had hinted at it to his readers for a while, I don’t know.

But the broader truth is that suicide isn’t something we usually can predict, especially not with our loved ones. There are those who display early warning signs, but for every person on suicide watch, there is a ‘happy baby’ who takes their families and friends by complete surprise.

I think what Manley was trying to do (what the writers of House were trying to do too) is bring this difficult conversation to the forefront and get people talking. Your opinion on Manley’s actions are irrelevant. It happened. Where do we go from here?

If there is any one person in culture having this conversation the right way, it’s the stand-up comedian Maria Bamford. She talks openly in her routine about her Bipolar Disorder and suicide. One of her best bits is called “Stigma” and you can listen to it on Spotify. I can tell you that for someone with depression, it is one of the funniest, most cathartic comedy routines I have ever listened to.

I don’t know if society will ever be capable of taking on this topic in a way that doesn’t fall back on preconceived judgments and fears, but I hope that if anything positive can come out of Manley’s death, it will be a willingness to look at this subject with fresh eyes.

Let us not hide from this.