The hollow valley and self-redemption
I met a person today who almost killed herself — a neighbour. She heard my broadcast today on bi-polarity and a new cure and it reminded her of the past. Her melancholy and remembered and reflected sadness made me think of novelists and poets.
In Darkness Visible, A Memoir Of Madness, William Styron of Sophie’s Choice fame, talks about his descent into the maelstrom of self-contempt and abject despair, what I call the black hole of depression where no light escapes; an alone and an unyielding suffering; a lack of meaning and love, and purpose, and worth. Self-inflicted homicide is an escape from the pain of living and feeling; it is the stopping of it, a cessation of taking in the same poison breaths of empty existence. The visibility of darkness is the stuff of living (to varying degrees let us hope) and the inspiration of much art and artfulness too.
In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot’s magnificent poem opens with this same vision of immobility, despair, and helplessness:
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets…
In the poem The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot again proclaims:
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
Alas
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Former President Bill Clinton spoke with me about this theme a few years ago, and how he read, during his own tough times, Darkness Visible — Styron’s ultimately uplifting autobiography.
Clinton has had his own battles with depression as I have, and, as many do. I want to add that there is, however, a big difference between my mild, sub-clinical depression that is common and requires no medication except excercise, rest, supplements and the love of my family, and full blown depression. Bipolarity itself is a whole other area of mental illness entirely.
For me, having stared down my own version of the black hole has though, in some respects, made me fearless as a broadcaster. I know that there can be an upside to the hollow valley – it is called survival for its own sake even when you don’t want to.
One such survivor in my studio today is a woman whose name is Autumn Stringam. Her husband Dana also accompanied her. Married 16 years, Autumn tormented herself and her family while suffering from Bipolar disorder until finally finding a cure in the form of mood stabilizing mineral supplements (more on that later).
What shocked me the most was how full of love were her husband’s eyes. Sitting in the studio, as he looked at her, it was as if he was seeing her for the first time; about him was the urgency of anticipation tempered by an understanding and a closeness that you could feel and that was humbling to witness –- and inspiring; a man who had endured so much simply loved her that much more — and she him.
What of “the cure,” the mood stabilizer nutritional supplement? Perhaps it is my most revolutionary product encounter in my broadcasting career to date. The discussion of it is on the website www.apromiseofhope.ca and in Autumn Stringam’s book, A Promise of Hope, or you can google Empower Plus and read about it yourself. I will warn you there is controversy and opposition. But I do not wholly trust the pyscho-pharmaceutical industry or “Big Pharma,” as it’s called, either who seem inclined to generally oppose natural remedies of any kind.
All I know now was what, in my studio today, I had witnessed: a woman with strong personal and anecdotal experience who overcame bilpolar disorder and a husband and a family that bore witness to her transformation.
But the love in her husband’s eyes is also a cure. He would still look at her the same way no matter what. I bet he had those same eyes all the while she was ill. And when he smiles at her with his eyes today they seem to mist over into almost different colors because they shine so; they shine at her; they shine for her.
Now that is worth living for.