Different Slants

(Author’s note: This story was originally written to assist my Rabbi in counseling people in our Illinois synagogue. I posted it after deciding its contents might possibly have a wider audience.

Since July 4th, 2008, it has become the single most viewed story I’ve ever written for this blog. Realizing this, to my surprise, I rewrote large parts of it on Sunday, 7/27/08 to give it greater clarity and to expand some thoughts I felt were too cryptic. I appreciate that so many people have connected with it, so I felt I owed them, my unseen readers, my giving the story a second look.  If this true story has meaning for you, please tell others about it.  Thank you.— Robert M. Katzman) 

 

My goal is to turn words into pictures.  To make it possible for people with no concept of clinical depression to comprehend what life is really like for people who live with that condition.  People like me.

 

So, I mined my life for some specific moments to try to convey the cold futureless world I lived in for over fifty years, before reluctantly accepting the possibility that new medications would change, literally change, my mind and make my life livable.  Not just livable, but worth living.  

 

Some people never get that far, and those are people you sometimes read about whom, in some cases, seem to have so much at their fingertips, so many resources, even a loving and supportive family, but none of whom were able to detect the subtle, deadly and progressive power of a simple chemical imbalance in a person’s brain.

 

Unlike so many illnesses with physical manifestations like coughing, fever, rashes, flu-like symptoms, loss of vision, hearing, heart problems, ulcers, anemia, osteoporosis and dementia, depression is silent.  Invisible to the eye.  About as obvious as a single blade of grass not moving, in a sea of meadow grass being raked by the wind.

To experience depression is a solitary experience.  No one can catch it from anyone who has it.  It may alienate family, friends and co-workers who believe that a person is unpredictably “moody” and someone who can dampen the festive atmosphere of any social event by simply showing up and being their grim, joyless uncommunicative selves.  Those kinds of outward symptoms serve only to deepen the pain of the depressed person and cause the subsequent reaction of others to them, to make their existing, self-fulfilling assumptions of their social unpopularity become reality.

 

(Author’s note: This story was originally written to assist my Rabbi in counseling people in our Illinois synagogue. I posted it after deciding its contents might possibly have a wider audience.

Since July 4th, 2008, it has become the single most viewed story I’ve ever written for this blog. Realizing this, to my surprise, I rewrote large parts of it on Sunday, 7/27/08 to give it greater clarity and to expand some thoughts I felt were too cryptic. I appreciate that so many people have connected with it, so I felt I owed them, my unseen readers, my giving the story a second look.  If this true story has meaning for you, please tell others about it.  Thank you.— Robert M. Katzman) 

My goal is to turn words into pictures.  To make it possible for people with no concept of clinical depression to comprehend what life is really like for people who live with that condition.  People like me.

So, I mined my life for some specific moments to try to convey the cold futureless world I lived in for over fifty years, before reluctantly accepting the possibility that new medications would change, literally change, my mind and make my life livable.  Not just livable, but worth living.

Some people never get that far, and those are people you sometimes read about whom, in some cases, seem to have so much at their fingertips, so many resources, even a loving and supportive family, but none of whom were able to detect the subtle, deadly and progressive power of a simple chemical imbalance in a person’s brain.

Unlike so many illnesses with physical manifestations like coughing, fever, rashes, flu-like symptoms, loss of vision, hearing, heart problems, ulcers, anemia, osteoporosis and dementia, depression is silent.  Invisible to the eye.  About as obvious as a single blade of grass not moving, in a sea of meadow grass being raked by the wind.

To experience depression is a solitary experience.  No one can catch it from anyone who has it.  It may alienate family, friends and co-workers who believe that a person is unpredictably “moody” and someone who can dampen the festive atmosphere of any social event by simply showing up and being their grim, joyless uncommunicative selves.  Those kinds of outward symptoms serve only to deepen the pain of the depressed person and cause the subsequent reaction of others to them, to make their existing, self-fulfilling assumptions of their social unpopularity become reality.

I speak only as one of the inflicted and not in any other capacity.  What I know, I learned by reading as much as I could to make solving my misery possible.  A person’s intellect doesn’t cease to function, but motivation can stop cold.  Mine did.

But I also learned that having an innate and irrepressible sense of humor, plus a solid central core of self-worth were as essential to my survival as microscopic white blood cells are to fighting equally invisible infections. Those two immeasurable assets in my life-long struggle with depression proved to be mighty weapons, until they too were overwhelmed by the progressive nature of the illness.  But it took half a century for that battle to be lost.

It is impossible to will or wish away one’s genes, and in my family, the force was very strong.  Both sides of my immediate family and grandparents possessed the capacity for depression. While I believe her witnessing a series of deadly pogroms in Poland in the early part of the previous century powerfully triggered my maternal grandmother’s depression, so many of my aunts and cousins have it that it must be as common to all of us as our dark brown eyes.  I wish it were as easy to remove an “infected” gene as an appendix.  Maybe someday.

Here are some moments, but not too many, I hope will illustrate the damning effects of untreated depression: Many new tears were shed while I was reliving old anguish in order to write this record of highly personal torment, but if only one other person reads this and benefits from my experiences, then that is a small price for me to pay.

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I owned a periodical distribution company in the last part of the Seventies. Starting out as one man, one magazine and one truck, it grew to be a really competitive challenge for the entrenched, seemingly monolithic existing distribution entity that initially dismissed my entry into their marketplace as irrelevant.  I was 26 at that time.

While in 1976 my goal was to diversify my life and hopefully improve my income, the larger company’s angry, outsized and illegal response to my flyspeck presence as a competitor within their domain drew the attention of the underground press in Chicago and subsequently even more media coverage.  I became a symbol of resistance.

I was aware, and even amused (but only at the start of this brutal five-year magazine war) of the irony of this developing situation, because at the very beginning I offered to work in a friendly, cooperative way with the larger company.  I wasn’t rebuffed, though, I was ignored.  Their indifference triggered a nerve within me that didn’t respond well to arrogance.  Or threats.  And this drove me into the arms of a welcoming and much larger competitor of theirs who was too far away to economically compete head to head in Chicago, but who was more than happy to supply me with whatever I needed to attack the local big guy’s market, as long as they received their cut.  The battle was joined.

That may be a dramatic phrase, but by the fifth year I was taking a million dollars in wholesale business away from my no longer so arrogant but still very large competition.  They knew I wasn’t a flyspeck at all, but even if I was one, I had a nasty bite.  A million then is the equivalent of four million in today’s dollars.

I think of this period of my life as sometimes glorious, publicly populist and locally historically significant. My endless battle in the streets to steal their previously captive accounts was met with such gratification from the long frustrated owners of those many businesses, that I was quite surprised to discover this enterprise I was engaged in had powerful symbolic meaning for people in other parts of the country who learned of this truly David and Goliath struggle in Chicago.

I received emotional verbal support and even offers of financial support from many, many people, including offers of protection from some members of the Chicago Police Department and members of the University of Chicago’s private police force.  It was as if I was in some sort of Roman arena.

I had no idea so many people were watching this public battle.  Everyone knew the odds of my succeeding were ridiculous.  I knew it, too.  But I never anticipated becoming a symbol to people.  I was very moved by what I eventually realized, that my willingness to even attempt what I was doing meant so much to so many other people.  This was all happening at the very moment when the first Rocky movie spread across America’s movie screens.

I understood that winning was impossible.  But my staying in the fight, month after month, year after year, captured other people’s imaginations in a way I never could have dreamed.  To many people, the first Rocky movie was inspiring and exciting.  To me, who saw it many times in hopes of sustaining my frequently faltering drive to continue, it was my Bible, my hope, my imagined self, hell-bent on staying in that bloody ring with Apollo Creed, the favorite and the assumed undefeatable champion.

Because in all that time, with all that work, I never made a dime.

The battle was all about principle and self-determination.  Or,

“Who the hell do you think you are, to tell me what I can’t do?”

That was what kept me going, day after exhausting day.  Sixteen hour days.  Before sunrise until long after sunset. The larger company knew I was making no money and didn’t get that I would fight them over mere principle.  We were not speaking the same language, and the months wore on.

That was when I first experienced the blackness, the terrible inner storm of depression.  This is what it was like:

After all the “cheering” stopped and the endless slog of filling and delivering my sixty customers’ orders faced me each week, like an endlessly repeating climb up the face of Mount Everest every seven days, I began to realize, in the third year, that I would lose.  That as my little company grew, it was inevitably becoming more like the larger company and adding more trucks and employees was making my very personal and hands-on

kind of service less personal and more and more dependent on hourly and indifferent workers.  I was becoming them.

Except that on a smaller scale, there was still enough money to keep going on a break-even basis with the endless hours put in by my first few inspired workers, my wife and me.  As an insurgency, we were viable.  But as a growing regular business, unfunded and without any real resources, we were not.

This terrible fact struck me as I was driving south on Clark Street near Diversey Avenue in Chicago, on a bleak winter night in 1978.  I would lose.  The million hours of work were all for nothing.  I was an idiot.  Caught up in a cause that was eating up years of my life and wrecking my body from lifting a never-ending conveyor belt of heavy magazine bundles and more bundles and more bundles and more bundles…and I stopped driving.

In the middle of a busy street, filled with restaurants, movie theaters, people and cars, I stopped.  And I sat there, like stone, filled with the raw truth of my pointless existence. I was no hero.  My symbolism meant nothing, and no point would ever be proven.  I was a block of granite in the middle of the street, unable to move.  Why should I?

I felt so cold inside, and then a kind of hollow blackness filled me and I was just a shell.  Then came the hopelessness covering me like a shroud, for the first time ever, shutting out all sound and light.  I was a fool, and I knew it.

But the world swirling around me was not impressed by my first experience with depression and made its unhappiness with my becoming rooted in the middle of a busy popular area of Chicago known to me.  First a few tentative honks from cars behind me.  Then more.  Then yelling.  Then both.  A symphony of blaring public protest from the lives I was interrupting.  Then some cab driver–and I hated the cab drivers who made driving my big truck so scary in a big city–began pounding on my window, screaming at me.

I slowly looked over to my left, saw the angry face of the man hitting my window, then heard him, then heard everything, then realized where I was and what was happening.  Like that, one light coming on at a time.

I placed one heavy foot on the clutch pedal, put my right hand on the round plastic top of the long black steel shift stick rising from the steel floor, shoved it into in gear, and my lumbering truck moved forward.  It jerked ahead and jerked me back into the present.  While I was now mobile, I still had a number of accounts to service and many magazine bundles to drop off.  But I wasn’t able to do that and instead, I drove back to my warehouse and quit working.

I had no medication.  I had no Rockyto revive my broken spirit.  I just stared into the night for a long time.

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I was myself again in the morning, but now aware of this bizarre strangeness that dwelled within me.  I didn’t know what it was, shrugged it off, and got on with my work after phoning my undelivered accounts, apologizing and asking their forgiveness because I had become sick. I said it as a reasonable excuse, but I didn’t grasp that it was true. That would take another twenty years.

The blackness and immobility only returned a couple more times while my company still existed, because the shock of self-realization had already happened and could only shock me once, I guess.  I don’t know how that works, but I am guessing I willed myself into continuing to function.  The other two times were not as public as that first time, and it seemed more like re-experiencing the same bad dream.  The paralysis was less severe.

Not that it matters for the purpose of this story, but I was very wrong about meaninglessness and being a fool. That turned out to be a manifestation of the depression and not necessarily reality.  Depression, I learned, can take a little bit of information and make it into an internal atomic bomb.  Except since no one else can see the mushroom cloud rising from your head, like in Hiroshima, no one else realizes what is happening within you.

In later years, with a clearer perspective and more mature understanding of what my four-year battle truly meant, both legally and as a symbolic act of defiance, I viewed and still view that time, 1976 to 1980, as the most important single accomplishment of my life.  It represents resolve, strength of character and a clear sense of justice to me.  I did, in fact, win the legal battle I was waging with my opponent at the same time as the business battle and eventually was paid by the other company to quit fighting them.  They didn’t buy my company or its assets, which I sold separately.

They paid flyspeck me to quit competing with them because I was costing them a fortune to fight. Not just in lost business, but because of all their expensive lawyers.

It was a major moral victory for me but also the time, after five hard years, to get on with my life.

So, though I experienced several severe bouts of depression, I also know the reality and how depression can distort the truth. I am very proud of my willingness to engage that big company, and also of my wife, Joyce, who fought them alongside me for the entire time.  Even after giving birth to our son, David, she continued to drive a truck and deliver magazines.  While she drove the large van, David (now forty and six-foot two) slept wrapped in a soft blanket and lying in a cardboard box sitting on the floor next to the stick shift.  The vibrations from the metal floor lulled him to sleep.  My allies were very strong personalities.

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Here is one more incident that I left out of this story, originally published July 4th, 2008.  I am adding it at Christmas time, 2008, because it serves as a reminder of how good strangers can be.  Sometimes, we all need that.

There was a small fresh fruit and vegetable store in Hyde Park, in 1978.  It was under the Illinois Central Railroad tracks and did a good business with the commuters rushing to their jobs in Downtown Chicago. There was a bright, colorful public mural of grapes, apples, pears, carrots and so on painted on the brick exterior wall of the shop that faced my newsstand, just west of it, across Lake Park Avenue.

The owner was a short, stocky, black and muscular man. He worked hard, all the time. We didn’t talk, but we nodded to each other when we caught each other’s eye. I knew his name was James. He was kind of reserved.  I assumed he was wrapped up in his own world of business and other problems and not in any way aware of what I was involved with in the hostile world outside of intimate Hyde Park.  He had a formality about him, a kind of dignity. But we weren’t friends.

The only indication James might have had that I was doing something besides selling newspapers on that corner was when my enormous black and white Gulliver’s Periodicals truck was parked outside of the store loading or unloading bundles of  thousands of current magazines.  The brick newsstand also served as Gulliver’s base of operations, initially.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Years later, in late December 1983, when James was shutting down his produce store and moving on, when business was falling off in many places, he motioned me with his hand to come over to his side of the street.  It was the first time this had happened, and very curious, I went over to see what he wanted. This was about three years after that seemingly endless and often irrationally savagely “Chicago Magazine War”ended, in 1980.  That old mural, once so pretty, was now faded and the paint was peeling off the brick wall.

James invited me into the tight little space behind his side of that brick wall.  All the shelves were now empty and there were old wooden fruit boxes scattered around our feet–bits and pieces of something that used to be good.  We shook hands. His hand was very harshly calloused and his grip was a strong one. A workingman’s hand. He invited me to sit on a couple of stacked up metal milk crates while he did the same.  He looked at me in the gloom of his dead business, like he was deciding what to say. I waited.

James began,

“Bob, I know you and I never really got to know each other over these last years.  But I have lived around Hyde Park for decades and I saw how you built up your wooden stand out of nothing. Even when it burned down, I saw you salvaging the good pieces of wood and starting right back up the very next day putting up new walls, hammering away into the night. 

People…black people…might not have known you much, neighborhood people like myself, but we saw you pick yourself up and we knew you weren’t a quitter when your luck turned bad.  There were quite a few brothers who saw you as more like us than most white men we’ve dealt with. Just ’cause a man don’t talk doesn’t mean he can’t see.  I never heard one bad thing about you from all those kids that worked for you.”

James smiled to himself, remembering.  I understood his unspoken words. I said nothing.

“The reason I’m telling you all this, just before I go, is I felt you would want to know something that I’ve been carrying around inside of me, for years.

It’s time for me to let it go.

In ’78 some men came to see me when you were in that long fight with that big distributing company, years ago.  They were from that same company.  A bunch of white guys in suits, you know? Maybe they were afraid to send just one to see me.

They wanted to sublet this space from me for quite a lot of money, much more than the rent I was paying.  They told me they were going to knock out the wall facing you and fill this place with magazines.  I think they said more than I was supposed to know.  I sure could’ve used that pile of money right then, like now, too.  You understand what I’m saying, Bob?”

I nodded.  He continued.

“Well, they said they wanted to knock you out of business where you lived, and put an end to you as a competitor of their company.  They were going to sell all the most popular new magazines at half price, advertise all over the place and drive you out.  They laughed and said you’d never know what hit you, that this was a war and you were out of your league.”

James straightened himself up, squared his shoulders and continued his story.  I was speechless, not that he’d notice the difference.

“I decided that these white bastards were a little too smart, a little too sure of themselves and that this was not their part a town.  They must have thought I was some dumb black guy who’d grab the money and run.  But I’m a Christian.  What they planned to do was to stab you in the back, but first they had to get rid of me.  My place was the only store there was for a block going north or south of here.  They must have decided that getting rid of me was the easy part.

Well, I know you’re a Jew–I read that long story in the Reader about you and those other guys years ago–but I decided, after listening to this nasty shit these guys were planning to pull on you, that you were fighting the good fight and that I was not going to be the Judas who let them kill you.  I decided…that even though you didn’t know me…that I was with you. 

If you were “out of their league”, then I wanted to be in that same league, and be with you.”

James smiled at the memory.  I wanted to kiss him.

This was a story out of the movies.

The Secret Hero.  Man!

But James had more to say:

“By then, I was getting angry…angry about what they wanted to do to you, and angry with myself for being tempted by all that money.  Angry that they thought they had me pegged, you understand?  Like I’m the desperate black guy who’ll do anything for money.  No principals, no hesitation…no nothing.

I would have been selling myself out, too, not just you.

I faced those bastards and told them that I was not for sale and if their white asses were not out of my place in five seconds I’d call some of the brothers to run over here and mess them up.”

But really Bob, I had no one to call.  As you know by now, I pretty much keep to myself.  But those guys were so white and so out of their world I decided to shake ’em up!  

You know, “The Big Scary Black Men Gonna Get You!” thing. I knew they had that racial madness inside of them, so I used it against them.

Man, those bastards banged into each other piling out of my little joint! They flew outa here and I never saw any of them ever again.  I have never been sorry about that moment.”

James was at the end of his story now, and he was a natural story-teller. I didn’t want him to stop.  But then, that’s the mark of a good story-teller.  They know when to go.

Thoughtful for a moment, James added,

“Sometimes…God tests you, and that may have been my time.

So, I got to go now, but I wanted you to know that I was with you, even if you never knew it.”

Finished, he stood up, looking at me like he had gotten rid of something heavy.  I was simply stunned.  I had no words to equal his.  What could I possibly say?

But then, inspired, I looked at him and said,

“James, men like you, good men, kept me going all those years, even if I never knew you.  Thanking you isn’t enough, but Jesus Christ, James!!  Thank you so much for making the right choice.  I had no idea anyone would stoop so low as to do what you describe. That’s not competition, that’s slaughter.  

I don’t think you ever have to worry about being a Good Christian James, because, man, you sure are.”

He smiled, a warm smile I’d never seen before.  We shook hands, workingmen’s hands, hard, worn and strong.  I put my sincerity into my grip.  I was grateful he chose to tell me something I could never have known any other way and now, his story was mine.  A Christmas gift to me from Silent James.

Near forty years later, I am giving his secret tale of character, courage and solidarity to you.  A real Chicago story of a good man, a man who knew who he was.

A man who knew he wasn’t for sale.

I never saw James again.  That happens so often in my life, amazing people coming in and out of my heart.

I leave little candles burning in my memories, hoping that, someday… they might return to me.

But, they don’t.

I write this story to honor James, and to thank him, one last time.

A Good Christian?

Damn right!!!

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But what about that irrepressible humor I mentioned earlier?

One day, years later, I was at a restaurant with part of my extended family on that same street, Clark Street, that I stopped at every night, for years, during my distribution fight.  Called Francis’, it was popular with truck drivers, had a steam table with delectable Eastern European Jewish food and was just a great place. The people at the table with me were my mother, my sister, my aunt, my two cousins, my older daughter and Joyce, my wife.

After listening to one of my cousin’s mention with some annoyance about new medications she had to take for her depression, impishness crept into me.  I looked around the table at the various people there, smiling to myself, and even though the waitress was waiting to take our order, I announced,

“Y’know, we are a very special club. Only depressed people can belong to our club. Will all the depressed people at this table please raise their hands?  

And I looked around the table, as one by one, my mother, aunt, cousins, sister and wife (yes, her too) all began smiling and gradually raised their hands.  But then, to all of our vast amusement, the waitress slowly, and timidly, raised her hand too, like she was applying for admission to our club.  Eight people inflicted with varying degrees of a serious illness laughed pretty hard that afternoon.

Although my wife, mother, aunt and younger cousin are no longer living, I still remember that moment as wonderful, funny and in effect, laughing in the face of our common enemy.  I am unaware of the fate of that waitress.

After meeting and agreeing to continue seeing a family therapist in 1999, Gela Altman, in an effort to confront my depression, I gradually became convinced of the necessity of selecting a medication to control my slowly worsening depression.  I was fearful of any new mind-altering drug and felt my familiar depression was better than taking some possibly personality changing substance.  I didn’t want to chance becoming a worse version of myself.  I was very stubborn and privately frightened at the prospect of medicating myself and possibly transforming into something I couldn’t predict.

How did I choose Gela Altman?

I called my insurance company and asked them to give me the names and numbers of whatever approved therapists were in my geographic area, but only therapists who were women.  Why women?  I feel more comfortable talking to women than men about complex emotions and all my inner twists and turns.  I also believe that women are far more tuned in to the mind and emotions then men are, and…that they both listen better and detect what isn’t being said more effectively, as well.

Sorry guys, but that’s my honest recognition of the superior gender.

None of the six women whose numbers I received were in, or picked up their telephones, but each had a message for me to listen and respond to. Gela’s voice was warm, welcoming and the most inviting.  I chose Gela before I ever met her because of her wonderful voice.

After some long and intense discussions over months, Gela told me she was pretty sure I was depressed and told me to see this psychiatrist to confirm her conclusions.  I did that. But the guy was an impatient jerk, spoke way too fast, was condescending and as you can obviously see, really annoyed me.  Plus–he cost a fortune.

So, he was history.  The defiant twenty-something me never went away, after all, decades later.

However, when I managed to get a word in edgewise to ask, he agreed with Gela and rattled off a list of numerous possible drugs, impatiently scribbling their names on a pad on his desk.  Gela and I discussed his suggestions.  Having done some reading on my own about the illness and the current drugs available, I asked her if any of the assorted drugs on that list would interfere with my sex life, which in itself would be one more reason to become severely depressed.  Sex was a drug of my own choosing and not one I would willingly surrender.

Gela, after checking a medical reference guide, responded that all of them would pretty much kill any romance in my life, except for one: Welbutrin, or its generic equivalent.

She then told me to go back to that schmuck psychiatrist to get a prescription, but I said no.

I told her that since I had exactly one choice of drug, I would ask my own very cool, patient and real world primary physician, Dr. Lee Freedman, to write the prescription instead.  He knew everything about me, plus the other drugs I was taking and would know if I was at any risk for dangerous interactions.

Gela was amused, but saw my point and was happy that I was willing to give any drug a chance to help me.

She was my therapist, and very professional, but I also could tell she was concerned that I not let my stubbornness short-circuit my desire to help myself and escape from the periodic torment that depression brings.

She also explained that even though the reasons remained mysterious, along with any drug I took, periodic conversations with her or whomever else I would want to work with were essential in maximizing the benefits of anti-depression medication.  I looked at her in some amazement.  And bemused fascination, too.  How could talking, every so often, with a therapist cause a drug to work better?  Does talking help aspirin work better?  Does talking make flu medicine work faster, or better?  How about radiation for cancer?

Gela said (and I asked her recently to remind me, so I got it right for whomever reads this) that through extensive testing with control groups at universities and clinics in America and Europe, leading people in the field of discovering the causes of and solutions to control depression concluded that,

“Therapy helps people understand the roots of their depression, change negative thought patterns and learn better coping skills. While a depressed person is on successful medication, there is enough emotional energy present to enable a person to cope with their depression, by freely expressing themselves.”

So, medically correcting an imbalance of serotonin in a person was insufficient by itself.  A sympathetic and sincere voice evidently had qualities that medicine alone couldn’t provide. This was an amazing idea to me.

The human voice was a drug, in and of itself.

But I already knew that, even though I didn’t realize it at the time, when it was the only “drug’ I had to help me.

But first though, before I tell the last part of my story on this curious subject, this is what happened next.

I requested and received the prescription for the non-sex life destroying, depression-relieving drug from my wise and cooperative Dr Freedman.  I thanked him, filled the prescription and then I carried the slender amber bottle around with me for six months before gathering the nerve to swallow one of those scary little pills.

Would I become Jeckle?

Would I become Hyde?

I became neither.

What happened is that the terrible periodic bouts of hopelessness and helplessness stopped.  Despair stopped.  A sense of worthlessness and pointlessness ended.  The freezing cold that seemed to come over me, inside of me, stopped.  I didn’t become happy and smiley all the time.  But I stopped feeling like life was no longer worth living.

In ten years, those amazing pills, with only one small adjustment for dosage afer my older sister did in 2010–plus periodic talking to the insightful and caring Gela Altman–have kept depression out of my life.  I may become unhappy with a situation or a person, but it is an emotion appropriate to the occasion and not brought about by an imbalance of a substance inside of my brain.  What a blessing that there exists a medicine that can actually help me.

But I also credit myself for somehow perceiving the as yet unseen Gela as having the correct amount of compassion in her voice to allow me to trust her enough, to let me begin to help myself, with her guidance. Maybe “compassion” can’t be measured out in specific amounts like a prescribed drug, but something in me that desperately wanted relief responded to her, and told me she was the one.

How did I know?

I can’t explain it.  But I was sure. I never consulted another therapist after our first meeting.

Anger is normal and part of the human range of emotion. So is sadness.  I may not enjoy experiencing those two emotions, and that is an infrequent part of my life these last ten years, but I surely know the difference between now–and then.  And I never want to go back to who I was before, ever again.

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Here is how I know about the power of a human voice, in a time of great stress.  As honestly as I can, I will try to recreate the paralysis of depression.  I can still remember how it was, but I didn’t really want to.  It took me a long time, weeks, to compel myself to faithfully relive a certain moment in time.  I hope it helps others who read this, because I won’t try to do this again. Here goes:

In the Winter of 1996, after my father suffered a stroke, but before his death, I had a particularly bad experience with depression.  My father, then 84, and I were very close–more than father and son, we were friends, too.  His slow death from congestive heart failure was torturous for me.  I had no one in my life that knew me like he did, and I was his closest remaining friend. All his many childhood friends from the old Jewish West Side of Chicago had died.  Like he often said,

“The circle is getting smaller”

It was, and we were the last two guys in it.

When the incident occurred, I had been up very early, aimlessly driving in the dark through the streets of a suburb northwest of Chicago.  I arbitrarily drove into the vacant acres of a parking lot in a town called Northbrook, an upscale area, and the shopping center was like a small town all by itself.  The parking lot, completely empty of cars, was the size of several football fields.  Maybe it was Christmas day.  I was the only car in all directions on a bleak and cold morning.

There was a dusting of snow on the ground and the wind pushed it back and forth over the white lines of all the parking spaces painted onto the black asphalt.  There were millions of little cracks in the surface of the parking lot, and some snow and pebbles were caught in those cracks.

I was acutely aware of all these details because I was sitting, immobile, in the center of the enormous parking lot.  When the wave of depression hit me, I just stopped driving.  I saw no reason to drive or do anything else.  Who cared, anyway?  I could stay here all day and it wouldn’t matter.  My father was dying, I couldn’t stop it, I had no magic powers to save him and I concluded that I had no value at all.

No honking cars this time. No screaming cab drivers.  No swirl of traffic or crowds of people flowing all around me.  Just a sea of painted asphalt, powdery flakes of snow, towering blank concrete walls of the shopping center, and silent me, parked like a fireplug in the center of all of it.

This rarely happened to me, and when it did, I just waited however long it took for time to pass and did nothing.  I never did anything, or called anyone.  That would have taken a superhuman effort, because part of depression is that there is no point in doing anything, no one cares about you, you could die and it wouldn’t make a single tear fall and that you are too insignificant to bother with anyway, so who could you call?

With that, the feeling that my hands weighed hundreds of pounds, no possible energy to lift them, and no will within me either, I certainly couldn’t use my cell phone, sitting inches from me on the seat of my car.

I stared at the little black plastic phone.

Is there anyone?

Maybe someone.

There must be…someone.  

Time passed.

Slowly.

I sat in my car, the motor running, warm air gently blowing out of the vents.

I was cold inside, but warm outside.

That made no sense.

Nothing made any sense.

Why should it?

Then I remembered: Rick.

Rick Munden, whom I met in sixth grade and knew forever. We talked frequently and sometimes I made him laugh.  Maybe he could make me laugh, this time.  He lived in California.  I bet he’s sitting in sunshine.  Nice thought.

Can I get to the phone?

It’s so close.

I can do that.

I can make a call.

Maybe I’ll wake him up.

Pretty early in California.

Maybe he won’t like that, though.

Maybe I shouldn’t call.

Too early.

He’s probably busy.

He does all this stuff with computers.

I don’t know what he does.

Very busy.

Too busy.

Maybe.

I’ll try.

The phone is right there.

I can do this.

So close.

Do it.

Call him.

Pick up the phone.

Just try.

So, after some more time crept by, I did.

I managed to dial the number and I heard it ring and ring. It rang forever.

Then someone picked it up and said hello. It wasn’t Rick. Who was it?

It was Mary. Mary Munden, Rick’s wife. Say hello, Bob.

I said hello, in a very small voice.

I knew Mary.

She was funny.

How do I explain about this?

What can I say to Mary?

Do I know Mary?

Does Mary know me?

Does anyone know me?

Will she talk?

Can I talk?

I remember now,

Mary is Catholic.

Very Catholic.

So different from me.

What am I doing, talking to Mary?

Not talking to Mary.

What now, Bob?

What now?

Where was Rick?

I was calling for Rick.

I–I–don’t……

But then, Mary started talking.  Too much time had gone by and somehow, Mary caught something in my voice and in my…silence.  She talked and talked and I said very little. I don’t remember what she said, but her voice remains within me.  It was like a soft wind blowing inside of me, chasing away the terrible cold.

Like a flute in total silence.

The notes were falling inside of me, going everywhere, bringing out colors from the blackness.

What was she saying?

I don’t know, Mary, but keep talking.

I don’t want to be so cold anymore.

Keep talking.

I can’t remember a single word she said.

Maybe I never heard the words, only the music.

How did she know what to say?

How could she know what was wrong?

How could anybody?

Keep talking, Mary.

After a while, I seemed to become human again.  I realized where I was and what had happened.  I thanked Mary for helping me.  I doubt she will remember that day.  Important for me, but maybe one more day of Mary being just Mary, for her.  I said goodbye and drove out of the parking lot.  I saw I needed gas, too.  How long was I sitting there?

A long, long time.

Mary’s family comes from California and has lived there for generations.  From Sacramento.  I know that fact about her.  I also know she’s gentle, has a quirky humor about her, and has a creative view of history.

I’ve read there are a thousand Catholic Saints.

I’m Jewish, so why should I care?

We don’t have any.

Well, I only care about one of them.

A very special one.

Saint Mary of Sacramento, Patron Saint of Immobilized Men in Parking Lots.

One of the important Saints.

Most people won’t understand any of this.

But some of you will.

I sure hope there’s a Saint Mary in your life, when you need one.

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So, that’s my story.  My rabbi, Jonathan Magidovitch of Congregation B’nai Torah, asked me to write this and I’m glad I did. I think he wants to use what I described to help him in giving comfort to people who may not realize they are suffering from depression.

I would like to think that was possible, though I didn’t ask him.  I do hope people who read this very intimate story which I finally decided to let the world see, after decades of keeping it to myself, will tell others to come to this blog and read my story for themselves.

Depression can be a killer, and you might help change another suffering person’s life.  Do not underestimate what it means for people suffering from the isolation of depression, if you try to help them.  Compassion is everything.

I’m not selling anything, but I would like to help other people like me.  It can be terribly lonely facing a disease like clinical depression, all by yourself.  Impossible, in fact.  Call someone you know who is in pain.  Tell them to read my story and come out into the light.  Things are different now.  I believe the world is kinder.  I hope so.

Thank you, for taking the time to understand.

Robert M. Katzman

July, 2008

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Publishing News!

Bob Katzman’s two new true Chicago books are now for sale, from him!
Vol. One: A Savage Heart and Vol. Two: Fighting Words

Gritty, violent, friendship, classic American entrepreneurship love, death, heartbreak and the real dirt about surviving in a completely corrupt major city under the Chicago Machine. More history about one man’s life than a person may imagine.

Please visit my new website: http://www.dontgoquietlypress.com
If a person doesn’t want to use PayPaI, I also have a PO Box & I ship anywhere in America.

Send me a money order with your return and contact info.
I will get your books to you within ten days.
Here’s complete information on how to buy my books:

Vol 1: A Savage Heart and Vol. 2: Fighting Words
My books weigh almost 2 pounds each, with about 525 pages each and there are a total together of 79 stories and story/poems.

Robert M. Katzman
Don’t Go Quietly Press
PO Box 44287
Racine, Wis. 53404-9998 (262)752-3333, 8AM–7PM

Books cost $29.95 each, plus shipping

For: (1)$3.95; (2)$5.95; (3)$7.95; (4)$8.95 (5)$9.95;(6) $10.95

(7) $11.95; (8) $12.95; (9)$13.95 (10)$15.95 (15)$19.95

I am also for hire if anyone wants me to read my work and answer questions in the Chicago/Milwaukee area. Schools should call me for quantity discounts for 30 or more books. Also: businesses, bookstores, private organizations or churches and so on.