In 1992, I was fighting
a crippling depression that had lasted three years, and was in
a day-treatment program at Abbott-Northwestern. I would spend weekdays
there and then evenings and weekends at home. The despair I felt
at that time was so total, so overwhelming, so agonizing, that
my “pain
meter” was buried in the red, 24 hours a day. I hurt so bad that I couldn’t
see color, I couldn’t hear music, couldn’t tell day from night. When
people talked to me, it seemed as if their voices came from miles away, like
hearing people across the lake on a still summer night. I hurt so much for
so long, that I couldn’t feel anything. And what was more terrible was
that I had come to think that this was my normal state, where I was supposed
to be. Like Jim Morrison and ‘The Doors’ sang: “I’ve
been down so long, it looks like up to me.”
I remember that I was
waiting in my car at the Burger King drive-thru, when a song came on the
radio. It was an old ‘Blind Faith’ song of Steve
Winwood and Eric Clapton’s called: “Can’t Find My Way Home.” It’d
been so long since I heard it, and such a favorite, years ago, that it somehow
pierced this thick cloud of pain. And for just a brief moment, I became aware
that the window was open, and it was snowing and my arm and the window controls
were soaked by the melting flakes. I became aware that it was a dark, wild
December afternoon with the clouds rushing across the sky like a herd of gray
buffalo. I could smell the food cooking in the Burger King, and see the traffic
hurrying by, and hear Steve Winwood’s sad, high voice singing: “...and
I’m
near the end, and I just don’t have the time. And I’m wasted and
I can’t find my way home.” And I sat and wept in my car. In sadness
that I, too, had been lost for so long, and I couldn’t find my way home.
And in happiness that I could, just for a second, hear the song, and smell
the burgers, and see the clouds and feel the snow. Could sense my heart breaking,
that I was still alive, not a dead person liked I believed I was so often.
And the next day in group therapy,
when asked how I felt, I said that I hurt. Not why I hurt, just
simply that I hurt. And I began to grieve, and let my heart continue
to break open, and heal. And I’m still
healing, still going. ![]()
