For JD Salinger with Love and Squalor

JD Salinger died today, aged 91.

My eyes are wet as I write this, not because his death was tragic - he had a long life - but because I want to mourn the passing of a great writer for whose work I am very grateful. It is right to cry for this death.

JDS was a recluse, so I know little about his life and I guess that's just how he liked it. But it's his works not his biographical details, that have had an impact.

Two of his stories are as much a part of my inner life as anything I have physically experienced. One is A Perfect Day for Bananafish and the other is For Esme - with Love and Squalor.

In both these stories soldier/veteran Seymour Glass meets a young girl. These girls have clear, direct voices. They are sympathetic to Seymour and willing to let him into their lives.

Seymour's mind has unravelled but he is able to connect with these girls, though it is not enough to save him.

In Bananafish Seymour kills himself. After reading For Esme I can see how he got there. After reading and re-reading I can see how the banalities of everyday life after the experiences of war are both empty and at the same time everything we live for. It's either enough or it isn't.

It's the lack of sentimentality that I am grateful for. JDS has no truck with hope. What an overused sentiment that is. It sounds good in speeches.

I hope my partner recovers one day but hope cannot sustain me. I need other tools - acceptance being chief, then patience, resilience, whimsy (in no particular order).

So I obligingly shed a few tears as I sit here on the beach, watching the gulls stalking breakfast crumbs and the little girls messing around in the sans, bossing their little brothers about. It's enough for me as it must have been enough for JD Salinger (he made it to 91 after all).

Flo

On the subject of sex (lack thereof)

Whether I like it or not, I've ended up in what I'd call a fairly conventional relationship - one man, one woman, a child, a pet, a (rented) house, a cat.

I didn't want to be in a conventional nuclear family. I wanted to be open to more possibilities. I didn't want to be restricted by what I saw as a very patriarchal structure.

It's not love that I was against, or even declaring love in front of loved ones (I was once married). It was the idea of being isolated from others in a house in the suburbs, cooking for two (plus kids), expecting one other to fulfill all needs emotional and physical.

And yet here I am. How I got here involves many little tiny steps, very few of which I regret. I have more love than I dreamed was possible before I had a child. And also, just by dint of having lived a few more years, I have learned some things about the parameters within which "romantic" love can survive and thrive.

And it is this latter which has paradoxically thrown me into what I would consider a non-conventional relationship - one which doesn't and may never again involve any sex (regular or otherwise).

Nightingale's song

I am now a carer. I look after our house, our child, our finances and all aspects of day-to-day life for our family when my partner is depressed.

I also make sure that he takes his medication or whatever he's meant to be doing for treatment.

The former is inescapable. The latter I struggle with - wanting to be hands off with his management of his illness but also wanting to avoid my suffering when he lets things slide.

Also it cannot be in any way acknowledged between us that I am a carer. He equates his illness with weakness and he feels guilt about not doing half the work.

Desert Island Top 5

Here are the top 5 things I hear when he's starting to get depressed. (And I don't mean things I think I hear. They're actually things he says, verbatim):

Counting my chickens

I’ve been very grateful in the last couple of days for the normal everyday existence that’s been possible while my partner has been well.

These are perhaps things that it would be easy to take for granted. And maybe, if he stays well, I might start doing that.

I’m going to list a couple of them here so when things have been good for a while I’ll remember how precious they are. And when things are bad I’ll remember what’s possible.

We walk the same line

I think there are a lot of commonalities between drug addiction and depression and the treatment for both.

The thing about depression, and living with someone who has depression is that it can be so isolating. The depressed person feels entirely alone, cut off from human-kind and unable to make themselves understood.

The person going through "fallout" also becomes isolated from normal social contact and cannot explain the reasons why to those around them.

But in fact what we are going through is not unique.

(Not so Blue) Mountains

We spent Sunday in the Blue Mountains, wandering around under the tree canopy. It was cool and peaceful in the filtered light.

We moved unhurriedly along the walkways, sticking to the paths so the 3-year-old cold run around safely.

It was beautiful. We haven't been that relaxed in a long time.

There's something about the feeling of wet dirt and leaf litter underfoot, the soft green light that makes it look like an under-sea forest; the green and yellow leaves and the long slender bark in red, white and brown.

It soothes the eyes and fills the lungs. It calms the mind, allows it to relax.

I am a rock

I should probably declare (I don't want to use the word admit because of the pejorative connotations) that I suffered from depression.

Good times

It's been a very good couple of weeks. I can almost forget what it's like when he's depressed. Everything feels so normal.

I guess it's like when you've got a cold and you're feeling miserable and you know that what you want more than anything in the entire world is to be able to breathe freely and you will never, ever take that for granted ever again.

Well, it's been a good couple of weeks (give or take the odd swing low). I love this sweet calm, this bit where I get to relax. I'm not sure how long it would have to go on for me to stop looking over my shoulder and wondering when it's coming back - a lot longer than this. Months maybe? I wonder what that would feel like.

In the meantime I'm rushing to get a lot in - a lot of breathing that is. And a lot of cleaning things out around the house, organising the massive piles of books and papers and and unopened letters and bills. I'm taking the opportunity to do it with a bit of cooperation.

Here's to the good bits. (I'd love to say I was wearing a (not so) glamorous dressing gown right now, toasting you all with a martini in a glass the size of a fish tank. I'm not, but you get the picture.)

Flo

Suffragette Sadie

I see myself as a feminist. I try to be aware of the ways in which being a woman affects my experience of the world. I try to fight discrimination where I see it. I am grateful to those women before me who fought for the rights that I now enjoy. I believe that the personal is political; that the distinction between public and private needs to be broken down.

And yet somehow I have found myself in a position where I do all of the cooking and almost all of the cleaning for my family. I take responsibility for the majority of childcare. I take responsibility for the running of our household, for all health, food and financial matters.

I think it's happened because my partner isn't capable of doing these things a lot of the time. His depression is debilitating so I have to do it. And then somehow it just became my job.

I think the fact that I am a woman and he is a man adds another dimension to the way I feel about the imbalance in the performance of domestic chores at our place.

On the one hand he is frequently not well and he can't do a lot of stuff and I understand and accept that (kind of, quite a lot of the time). It's really hard to work through the imbalance and not feel anger and resentment about it, or guilt for feeling those things. It's one of the big things about living with someone with depression.

On the other hand it really rankles to be thrust into this traditional role of wife (domestic slave). I feel like I'm rebelling against having to do the work, which is hard and boring a lot of the time, and also feeling like I've lost my rights; like I've given in to the traditional duties expected of a woman in a not-so-bygone era, like I've betrayed myself and the things I believe in.

I think this is an issue specific to being a woman whose male partner is depressed and I'd be really interested to hear what other women feel about it.

I imagine there would also be other matters that are particular to people in different configurations of relationships.

Flo

It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

How much of depression is learned behaviour and how much is it biological?

My partner grew up in a house with a violent alcoholic father. His parents were poor and uneducated. His siblings both have drug/alcohol dependency issues.

There isn't much family unity. Although his parents are still together and live a couple of hours away from us, we might see them once or twice a year and that's always at our instigation.

His closest (and pretty much only) friend is someone he's known since he was in pre-school. He spent a lot of time at this person's house because his mother used to take him there to get him out of his father's way.

A few loose ends

First of all, my partner's trip ended up being a good experience for him. He got through the night alone in the hotel. He went to a movie and stayed out late. He went to see all the exhibitions he wanted to see. He was okay, and better still, I do believe he was actually happy!

Yesterday's low turned around in a record half-a-day. I couldn't believe it. This is definitely a new phase of his depression. Usually he feels low for a couple of days (and before that it would be a couple of weeks). The switches happened so rapidly this time. It literally took minutes for him to swing from fine to stormy and then back again.

The thing is I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want to be in a relationship where my partner is sometimes there and sometimes not.

Right now he’s in bed while I’m in the kitchen, giving him space. And our hallway is a mess of books and DVDs.

All this because things don’t fit well in the shelves we’ve got. And this makes him feel bad because we can’t get the shelves he wants because they cost money we don’t have. And anyway, you have to bolt those to the walls and we rent so we can’t do that. And that means he feels bad because we don’t have a house.

Over night

My partner has gone on an over-night trip. The night before he left he panicked. He told me that the last time he was alone in a hotel room he had very dark thoughts and he was afraid to go.

It's my fault he's away. I bought him tickets to see an exhibition that he was interested in. And I got him a night in a hotel because I thought he would prefer not to be rushed while viewing it and the show is on in a city quite far away from us. I thought he would appreciate the solitude. (It's what he seems to love at home.)

Television Daze

Our television has been “broken” for five days now. We broke it by pulling the plugs out.

When the 3-year-old watches TV he does it with frightening devotion. He is totally fixated on the screen. And his behaviour seems to be more intense generally on days when he watches it.

I also had some concerns about the link between depression and watching TV. (Certainly I start to feel depressed listening to the awful music that seems to go with kids’ TV. Why does it have to be so mediocre? Why do the little girls have such high nasal voices?)

Year Zero (again)

Happy New Year to you. For those who haven't had such a great few days, here's hoping things get better soon.

I woke up earlier than the other two this morning and so had some very precious time to sit and contemplate my navel.

How will I use this great gift of a clean slate, another go around that the new year makes me feel I have?

Here's a little list of the profound and the banal, all mixed up together.