I gave my depression a name, made it a character in a book, and beat the crap out of him

As you may have read in my earlier character study of Greycloud, there was a period of my life that was pretty rough, at least for me. I didn't go into too many details in that previous post, since the main topic was how the character Greycloud got his name. You can read about that in the link above. 

But now that I've kind of opened that door, I thought I should share something a little more personal with you. I don't know if you'd even care to hear about it. I mean, we all have our own problems and something that was profound to me, may be inconsequential to you. It's far too easy to compare the size and depth of scars without simply acknowledging that they're both scars.

Before you read further, please know this - there are two ways to handle those moments where injury occurred. You can wallow in the misery of it as an eternal victim of circumstance, (effectively trying to keep the wound open so it never heals), or you can come to terms with the fact that it happened, that time marches on and you can try to use that moment as a learning opportunity. Turn the harm into something useful, if you can't turn it into something good. This approach is how you heal and the wound closes. Yes, it will become a scar. It will forever be a reminder of that moment, but it will eventually stop hurting. And the lessons learned may even allow you to reflect on that time with a kind of bittersweetness. I guess you could call it forgiveness.

Without further ado, let's rip open that old scar. 

It began in 1990.

You could certainly say that the first injury occurred much earlier and lasted for much longer, but that's a different story. Where it really began, was at the start of my highschool years in North Carolina.

My father was an artist. His medium, glass. He made stained glass, blown glass, fused glass, dichroic, beaded, neon, and so on. 

He had his own injury in youth, that set up in him a conflicted heart. He wanted recognition, but felt he wasn't worthy of it. He wanted his father to notice him, gently slap him on the shoulder and tell him he was proud of him. He wanted this with a kind of heart breaking desperation that he couldn't formulate into words. It was just a pain that sat in his heart. Tender to the touch, yet wanting to be touched. 

His father fought in WW2 and came back hardened, but not disconnected from the world. He just had little patience for anything that wasn't practical or utilitarian. To have a son whose passion was art wasn't something that he hated, but he didn't respect it either. So that was my father's pain that he carried - the pain of not receiving the love of his father the way he wanted it to be given. His father certainly loved him, you could tell. There just wasn't a need to state the obvious, in his mind. 

We give Boomers a hard time, but they didn't have it easy growing up, so it's not surprising they kind of checked out on raising their children - the Gen x'ers.

I was a latchkey kid. As a second grader at 8 years old, I was entrusted with the care of my younger sister in kindergarten from roughly 3pm to 5pm everyday after school until one of the parents got off work. With both working, we were still too poor for proper daycare.

That kind of experience... That kind of responsibility, makes a child grow up fast. 

So, fast-forward a little over 10 years later. Those dynamics - of a father in search of recognition, but letting his own feelings of unworthiness lead him to sabotage every success he has, and me, a young man who had to grow up a little sooner than others - eventually came to a head. 

My father found a path to ease his suffering through alcohol and prescription medication. Muscle relaxers, pain killers. I began to see my father as if I were the parent and he were the child.

He passed out at the dinner table from an 'accidental' overdose. That was the first shock to the system. Dragging your father, 6'1, 350 pounds, from the dining table to the couch, mostly by myself, with a panicked mother, 5'4 maybe 120 at her heaviest.

The years after that were all variations of that night until one day my mother announced she wanted a divorce. I was 19 or 20 by then, my sister, 17 (she'd already moved out a year earlier -trying to find her own way to cope... in unhealthy ways). So we were old enough to handle this decision and had endured enough to feel nothing but a deep gnawing pain under the rib cage, right next to your heart. It was a thorny mass that if you let yourself feel something, joy, pride, love... the heart would swell, the thorns would cut and stab and the only way to stop the pain was to turn off the feeling. Cut out the joy. Don't seek out anything that tugged the heart strings because the moment you feel something good, it comes with so much pain behind it. Like sticking your finger into that open wound with raw nerves exposed. 

So you shut down those things. You get good at it too. 

That's the feeling that gave birth to the character of Greycloud. I have far too many memories of being lost in that space between feeling something and refusing to feel anything. It's my best understanding of what depression feels like. And that feeling would sometimes be triggered by an event, or most frequently, a memory of an event. When the Greycloud appeared, I'd go driving. No destination. Just wander the streets late at night, driving until I didn't feel like driving anymore. 

I'd usually end up at a Waffle House, spending hours writing or drawing, chugging cup after cup of coffee. 

Many years have passed since then. No, I haven't gone to therapy (except that one time), but I've come to terms with all of that stuff. The wound has healed and I can look at the scar with an ease that doesn't bring the Greycloud back. I remember how I got it and what it felt like. I still have the thorns sitting next to my heart and have to be careful about what I remember and how deeply I let myself feel. But I don't have any anger about it. I don't think I ever really did, at least not the kind that is loud and obvious to others. If I felt anger, it was largely quiet and internal. 

So that is the full story behind Greycloud -or at least as full a backstory as you're going to get out of me. I made him a character long ago, first as a mentor, like a wisened wizard, then as a full character in his own right. In The World Ender, I gave him a family, something that he's unable to keep. I gave him a desire to have that family, although his work is more important. He justifies making the trade - he's trying to save the world after all. But, in the end, he's the cause of their death and the reason the world is in jeopardy to begin with. He is his own saboteur. And he must live with that knowledge. That self-hating pain.

By the end of this first story, he's out for revenge, trying to hold others accountable for what he set in motion. As the stories continue, we'll see that feeling crystalize as he takes more and more dramatic steps to make others pay. 

Maybe one day he'll come to terms with the hard truth that he was the cause of his own pain all along. Only time will tell.