Randomly Rambling into 2016

Took a walk this morning. So, what's new about that, you ask? Nothing in particular, I suppose, except I've missed doing much ambling about since-mid-December. That was when I got kissed by some sort of virus. I was suddenly tired with a scratchy throat that eventually became something like sandpaper had been used and thus left it sore. My body was all achy and racked with pain and I turned into a NiteQuil addict through the Christmas Season.

I know I wasn't alone, a lot of people were sick lately. I hate it so and haven't succumbed to many illnesses in the last few years. It visited me as Christmas approached and was as insistent on sticking about as Scrooge's Three Spirits. It didn't nag me about my past, present or future deeds, though, it just nagged like a scold battering me with a prickly broom.

The upshot of this downside was I lost my walks and my exercise. I had no energy for working out and the gremlin of germs especially kept me imprisoned  after the mild weather and pleasant temperatures turned damp and despondently drear, with drizzle and wind. I avoided walking out of fear of rekindling the fires of fever and flu.

Unfortunately, my ailing didn't stop me nibbling away at all the tempting treats of the season, thus the results are that I gained back some of the weight I worked so hard last year to dispense with since I was doing nothing to burn off what I shoveled in.

But I took a walk yesterday morning and again today; the last walk of 2015 and the first of 2016. I felt these jaunts. Both days I had not traipsed afar when my hips and legs tightened and stiffened,

and soon my feet apparently gained about 100 pounds each. Still I pressed on my five miles yesterday, although probably, perhaps, maybe a bit over three today. Tomorrow I will walk some before church and on Monday, Lord willing, I will resume my regimen of walk and workout and normal diet. We will do yeoman battle against the new inroads of blubber about my coast lines.

It was cheering to see, having not ventured to Brandywine State Park for some time, that the new bridge is in place over Rocky Run. The old bridge was closed about two years ago and a new one had been promised for Spring 2015. Well, technically the weather did seem a bit spring like up until today. (That is the old bridge to the left and the new on the right.)

I recorded and am watching in bits and pieces a movie that popped up on Showtime yesterday. It is called, "Boulevard" and is one of the last films made by Robin Williams. It is dealing with a successful, if in-a-rut, banker struggling with his sexual makeup. One day leaving work he picks up a young male prostitute. I know this movie will end badly, but I'll see it through anyway. My daughter is always commenting on how many sad movies I watch.

I had never heard of this film before, I just started watching it because I could catch it at the beginning and I didn't feel like putting up with commercials on the regular channels. I ended up pressing record because I do like watching Neil Caputo's news show in late afternoon, one of the very few I view.  The movie, though, intrigued me because it seems like Robin Williams began portraying a number of depressing characters in the second half of his film career, and doing them very convincingly. Given his own demise, it is not surprising, is it? I had told my wife long before Robin hung himself that I thought he was a very unhappy man. I have some upfront and personal experience dealing with depression and I thought I recognized it him despite the zany, hyperkinetic persona he wore most of the time.

The thought struck me first on watching him on some talk show. He came on in his usual mile-a-

minute joke persona and he constantly flew off on impersonations and wild scrambles of words during the interview, but in the fleeting seconds between such flights he dissolved, if only briefly, into what I would call his natural face. That is the face we have when we allow our features to just totally relax. We don't smile or frown or mug or do anything consciously with our countenance. On the left is what I believe is my natural face.

A bit skull-like, I guess with my eyes showing the unevenness caused by the Graves' Disease I once suffered, but nothing consciously done. I just allowed my features to relax into their natural, nearly 75 year-old state.

Now, it is difficult to find a natural face of a celebrity. There are many images available of Robin

Williams, but almost all are taken when the man was conscious of his expression. They are during performances, appearances, posed, scenes in a film, but pretty much with the man's knowledge he is being photographed.

This one on the right may be as close as we can get to his natural face. It appears to have been snapped as he moved away from a backdrop for an event, like the red carpet at an awards show. A moment ago he was probably posing and even doing one of his shticks for an interview, but here he moves away and his face becomes downcast. The eyes are distant, off somewhere and somewhat sad; his mouth has curved into the near frown he always seemed to have in his last years. When you look at photos of him smiling he appears to be struggling to do so, his lips compressed and still slightly down.

Living with depression is not living a life; it's dwelling in a constant nightmare. His story is very sad. Sometimes I wonder if a few of the later movies he choose to do were a hidden cry for help.

That may seem a bit out there to some, but you never know. Believe me, people who suffer from depression, bipolar and related such problems are very good sometimes in hiding their problems in plain sight. You have to become attuned to subtleties and other behaviors sometimes to realize someone is in dire need of help.  Big issues may be reveling themselves in small gestures.

There's Probably Poison in the Glass

The game of life is hard to play
I'm gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I'll someday lay
So this is all I have to say

That suicide is painless

     --Johnny Mandel - Michael B. Altman

Robin Williams seemed always on, always manic and everyone laughed. And he couldn't sit still long. The TV Talk Show host or another guest would say something and Robin would be in flight again. The slightest word could send him bobbing down some abstract path of off-beat observations and myriad accents. But sometimes, when perhaps it seemed no one was watching, he would sit a moment quite and go to what I call his normal face.

I thought for many years catching a glimpse of that normal face that this was a sad man.There were not laugh lines in that face, just a mouth that fell into a deep frown and eyes that my wife calls sad. I saw his eyes more than sad; eyes distant and fearful. 

This look was always brief, a mere flicker of a shadow between bouts of kinetic mania and a flood tide of words.

Perhaps then there is some irony in Robin's choice of inspiration, Jonathan Winters.

Jonathan Winters was a favorite of mine in my youth as well. He had a quick wit and fertile imagination that took flights of fancy at the drop of a hat, much as Robin did. But maybe that wasn't the only thing that drew Robin to Jonathan, for Jonathan Winters suffered from Bipolar Disease and now they tell us Robin suffered from Clinical Depression.

Bipolar and Depression are mental disorders I know something about. It's not that I suffered from either, but let's just say I have had a close relationship to them for several decades.

People without these problems are often stymied by those who do. We all experience bouts of depression over the course of our life. The difference for most of us is we get over it and the cause is justifiable most of the time. We lose a job, we lose a friend, we have deaths, illnesses and sometimes disaster. I've been through that whole list, sometimes more than once. The thing is that I, and most of us, get past the depression. We get up, dust ourselves off and get on with life. We put our potholes behind us and don't dwell upon them and we find the positive things of life to focus on.

And when a Robin Williams hangs himself we are often mystified, sometimes even angry. He had everything, money, fame and admiration. He wasn't washed up; he had four movies in release and one in post-production planning. He would have been welcomed hardily on any talk show on TV and if he had decided to go out on a stand-up concert would have probably filled any theater. "So what," we say, "if he had his TV show cancelled after one year. Yeah, he'd had heart surgery, but he survived it, didn't he?"  Now we are told he had the beginning  stages of Parkinson's Disease.

So some may say he was a coward who couldn't deal with that. 

Well, perhaps if it were I, you could say that. I am one who tends to find joy in living, even when there may not be much joyful at the moment around me. But you see, as stated, I don't suffer from Clinical Depression. 

A person who has Bipolar and/or Clinical Depression (and remember it is something they have, not who they are) is trapped in a strange prison. The windows of their prison filter out the good and most of what they see is negative. And if there really is a negative that happens to them, they never forget it and they dredge it up and chew upon it like a cow with its cud. They don't absorb compliments, but will hear a criticism, sometimes when there is no criticism intended. 

I can best explain it this way. You know the old question when presented with a vessel filled to the halfway point: Is the glass half full or half empty? We might expect the depressed will say, "Half empty." Chances are they won't even take note of that question.

They will say, "The glass will leave a ring on the table."
And you may tell them, "No, it won't. It's on a coaster".
But this will not comfort them. "I think the glass has a crack. It's going to break and stain the rug."
"No," you say, picking up the glass and tapping the bottom, "it is solid."
And they will say, "Don't drink that. It is probably contaminated."

People suffering from this kind of depression are not going to see they have admiration or money or fame or a career or friends or anything else when the Black Dog stands before them. I speak from long experience.  Whatever door of escape you open to them, they will find a reason to close it. Or perhaps for someone who does what Robin did, they only saw one open door and it was unfortunately the one they chose to enter.

What can be done? One thing is to be more open about these mental disorders and understand what you sometimes see is not who the person really is. We must remove the stigma of having such a disease. There are medications that help control it, though as of yet there is no cure. We can treat the person with respect and love. We can hold them when they need it. We can understand them even when they aren't likable. And we can keep our eyes open and watch them. Perhaps if we are diligent we can keep them with us.

Lets speak of one more thing. The word selfishness is being debated right and left in the media. Is suicide selfish? Yes, it is, but with those who suffer from Bipolar and/or Clinical Depression it is not done with self-awareness, not the way we would count self-awareness in ourselves. It is the disease that is selfish. I think most professionals who deal with these diseases, at least those I have been in contact with, will tell you that those who suffer these diseases are selfish; perhaps self-centered is a better word, but it is all about them. You may not like anyone saying that, but it is true because that is what the disease does, it makes you need to be the center of attention. You don't believe me? Then tell someone with these diseases your pain and see how quickly the conversation turns to their "worse" pain.

You have to recognize that selfish goes with these diseases or you won't survive dealing with those who have them. 

It is a cruel disease, for it not only imprisons the victim in misery, it often drives away those who love the victim because they can no longer stand both the negativity and the self-centeredness. Many marriages crash on the dark shoals of depression. To sail your ship of relationship you need to see the real person beneath the shroud of the disorder and you yourself must be selfless.  I'm not saying it is easy; I am saying it is worthwhile being their support system.

I really don't know what support Robin had, but no one should feel guilty about the outcome. Depression is a dark and dangerous swamp that no one chooses to enter, it just takes you, and it is very difficult to escape and sometimes it simply sucks you down to the damp and deathly depths.