Big Mike: My Horrors Are Bigger Than Your Horrors

The woman appeared to be boiling over. Let's call her Fatima. She seemed to be dying to say something but knew it might ignite a verbal melee. She found a roundabout way to say it, though. What followed was not an explosion but a simmering huff. The explosion would have been better.

Let me set the scene. The Loved One and I participated in a gallery exhibit at the Lakeside Legacy Arts Park the week before last. Entitled "Snap Out Of It..., Don't You Hate It When They Say That?" the show focused on clinical depression.

The show's barn boss was a visual artist named Sophia, a dear old pal of mine. She's fought a lifelong battle to get people to take clinical depression seriously. She suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a symptom of which is depression. Too many people have implied that she's merely being lazy. Some have come right out and said so. With the show, she created a constructive public outlet for her frustration.

I did a reading of a piece entitled, "I'm Slipping." It recounted a bit of my own lifelong battle against depression. Here's how it started:

I'm slipping.

Again. Same old thing. My life becomes very simple when I'm in the big slip. Sleep. Eat as many carbohydrates as the world's farms can produce. Tell myself what a lousy, lazy bum I am. Go back to sleep. Wake up. Eat more carbs. Insult myself. Do it all over again.

A lot of people love the simple life.

What's to love?

Later, I write:

I'm alone.

There must be some outward sign that warns people I'm toxic. Stay away! Don't touch, don't inhale, don't catch it!

When I'm slipping, people find ways to sidle away from me. And I think, "Those jerks. Couldn't get enough of me six months ago, now they wouldn't pour their drinks on me it I was on fire. What's wrong with them?"

But something's wrong with me. I radiate something. I've heard that if you walk near a big radio station's transmitter, you can hear the broadcast in your head, as if the metal in your fillings has received the signal and now is treating you to the Jonas Brothers in the caverns of your cranium. Maybe that's how powerful this depression is - 50,000 watts-worth of misery pouring out of me like the WGN signal.

I even delve into my wrangling with the ultimate solution:

Gotta find a way out of this mess.

Suicide. I've thought about it every day for most of my life. Sometimes, every hour....

... People become angry when they hear about a suicide. They say the person who did the dying was - take your pick - selfish, sinful, weak, or even all three. As if the cutting, the hanging, the ingestion of poison, the inhalation of toxic gas, or the submersion in frigid waters was the moral equivalent of having an office fling or eating the last of the ice cream.

In true Hollywood fashion, I end on the upbeat:

In a never-ending attempt to right my listing ship of sanity, I've tried talk therapy, group therapy, cognitive therapy, behavioral therapy, Freudian analysis, four different antidepressants, Valium, Xanax, Buddhist chanting, prayer, St. John's Wort, exercise, gin, vodka and beer, promiscuity, abstinence, pot, and at least a half dozen other panaceas I've forgotten or am too embarrassed to mention.

Trial and error. If at first you don't succeed, yadda yadda yadda. I hit on Zoloft when I was 46. Seven years ago. Hmm. I think this might work. I don't feel too much like killing myself anymore. Zoloft. And hope. They're all I've got.

I promise you - I swear to you - I'm gonna snap out of this. Because that's how easy it is. I made the decision and set out to complete this task and I'm almost finished. And it's only taken..., let's see now..., 36 years. It's a snap!

The fun thing about doing a staged reading is that, for a few minutes at least, I'm a rock star. A sculptor ran up to me after I was finished and lavished more praise on me than I could possibly merit. As she gushed, Fatima approached.

Fatima was born in a country that's notorious for its history of violence and unrest. She's made it clear many times that this whole business of depression is the bunk. According to Fatima, depression is easily conquered through prayer and a stiff upper lip.

Antidepressants? Hah! Shrinks and support groups? A couple of rackets.

Her's is precisely the attitude "Snap Out Of It..." was intended to address.

Exuding tension, Fatima waited for an opening. When the sculptor said that today's economic woes may set off an epidemic of depression, Fatima couldn't hold herself back. "You know, people have no idea what problems really are," she began.

Her eyes flashed wide. Her jaw jutted. "I've seen people shot on street corners. I've had to take cover for my life. Americans don't have any problems yet they're always talking about how horrible things are. It's sickening! Maybe people should experience real horror."

I sensed immediately that she was really referring to my tale of woe. Yet, wishing to avoid a scene, I found myself nodding. "Oh yeah, I know what you mean," I replied in my oiliest salesman voice. "We're richer and healthier than 98 percent of all the people in the world...." And so on.

What I should have done is tell Fatima to go fuck herself. It would have made me feel a lot better. When you're clinically depressed, you should always try to make yourself feel a lot better.

Big Mike: This Depression Ain't So Great

Visual and spoken word artists have joined forces for an exhibit on depression (the skull-jockey variety, not the economic kind) in the Dole Gallery at the Lakeside Legacy Arts Park in Crystal Lake, Illinois. The show, "Snap Out Of It... Don't You Hate It When They Say That?" which runs through May 15th, features deeply personal ruminations on the illness, which some 20 million Americans grapple with.

May is Mental Health Month in McHenry County. Lakeside Legacy Arts Park this month also features "Voice - Adolescent Allies," in the Sage Gallery, featuring works by teens exploring relationship power dynamics and sexual violence.

Here are images of some of the works from "Snap Out Of It."

"Social Phobia," acrylic on canvas, 2009,

by Sophia Anastasiou-Wasik

"I Would If I Could," computer graphics, 2009,

by Karen Roszkowski

"Addiction" (left) and "Obsession," both mixed media on Masonite, 2009, by Sophia Anastasiou-Wasik

"I'm Falling," prose poem performance, 2009, by Michael G. Glab

In case you're looking for this week's installment of Randolph Street, photojournalist Jon Randolph is missing in action today. To the best of our knowledge, he had pressing social and convivial responsibilities last night which kept him from his cozy bed until the wee hours. We trust he has an ample supply of aspirin on hand for when he greets the day.

Check in with us tomorrow. Hopefully, good old Jon will have rejoined the living by then. Come to The Third City every day for top-notch writing and terrific pictures.

Big Mike: Fathers And Sons

Benny Jay's post about his daddy-o's mini-medical emergency sure gave me a start. Reading the first few sentences, I felt certain the tale would come to no good. I'm happy it didn't.

I've met the old bird once or twice in my life. I know he'd been a prof, teaching a ridiculously esoteric subject at a high-toned university. He seems as smart as Tolstoy and Sakharov put together. Any topic is fertile ground for his musings. He once lectured Benny that I mispronounce my own last name.

That's why it was so shocking to learn he'd been a paratrooper. For pity's sake, those guys are the toughest, boldest bastards to wear a uniform!

So not only does Old Man Jay possess a cerebrum that weighs more than the unabridged Old English Dictionary, he has a touch of Lee Marvin in him as well. That has to be a tough act to follow.

Benny Jay is more a combo of Royko and Alinsky. That's a terrific exacta but still, it pales in comparison. I wonder if, in his private moments, Benny Jay curses his luck that he'll never be able to live up to his father's standards.

The whole father-son thing rubs the rawest of my emotional lesions. My old man, to belabor the metaphor, was a mix of Archie Bunker and the Sphinx. The similarities between Old Joe and the protagonist of "All in the Family" are jarring. They were of similar age, both were high school dropouts, as philosophically attuned as two unlettered Depression-era babies could be, and prone to lash out at anything that threatened their provincial views of the world. I kid you not, they even had the same jobs - both were shipping/receiving dock foremen.

Whenever anybody waxes poetic about how brilliant the sitcom was, I roll my eyes. They ask, Didn't you think it was the funniest thing? I respond, Why the hell did I have to watch it on TV when it played out every night at my family's dinner table?

As for the second half of the tie-in, suffice it to say that if Old Joe and the Sphinx were pitted against each other to determine who could be the more mum, the contest would end in a draw. That is, except for when Old Joe was moved to howl to the world about how his family wasn't worth a nickel.

One day, during a period of family stress, he instructed me to set up a meeting of my siblings at his house because he had something important to tell us. Young Joey, Good Old Franny, and I arrived at my parents' Berwyn penthouse at the appointed time. (Charlotte was absent, having moved to Florida years before.) We sat around the kitchen table with Old Joe at the head.

What was the big news? Were he and Ma planning to move to Florida or Arizona? Had they won the Lotto and wanted to share some of their winnings with us? Old Joe looked at each of us before he spoke. Finally, his voice cut the silence. "The Glabs," he announced, "are shit!"

That was it! His big announcement! Young Joey and Good Old Franny sat gaping. My ears turned red. I leaped up and lashed out at him. All I remember was a torrent of invective that seemed to go on forever. Each of us gave as well as he got. As Old Joe and I bayed at each other, Young Joey and Good Old Franny sat stunned.

I don't regret flashing daggers in response to Old Joe's pronouncement although I realize now he'd suffered all his life from a horrifying clinical depression. He was never officially diagnosed but I don't need to be a shrink to know that he had the disease.

Whereas Benny Jay must surely grapple with his perceived inability to accomplish one-tenth of what his daddy-o did, I wrestle with my own perceived potential to live down to Old Joe's direst predictions. There were all too many of them.

Each of us - my sibs and me - has borne the scars of being raised by a man who utterly despised himself and anything that came from him (meaning us.) Old Joe never needed to make a formal announcement that I, a member of the accursed Glabs, was shit. He conveyed that message to me through subtle words and deeds all my life.

He died nearly fifteen years ago. His aorta burst and the surgeons spent an entire night attempting to sew it back together. They did this knowing that the odds of him surviving were infinitesimally small. How ironic that at the end of his life, a life lived wholly without hope, Old Joe's loved ones and those talented doctors clung only to the merest of hopes to keep him alive another day.

After the surgery was finished, I went back home to shower and change clothes. As I stood under the hot water, crying as deeply as a five-year-old, the phone rang. Old Joe had emerged from the recovery room on life support. There was no hope left.

I dashed back to the hospital to join the family around his ICU bed. Old Joe's organs were shutting down one by one. The consensus was to pull the plug. They only wanted to give me an opportunity to make the vote unanimous.

I couldn't bear to see him in such pitiable condition. Of course, I said, let's let him go. His heart monitor line went flat some 20 minutes later.

The funny thing is, he'd been in a coma since his aorta had ruptured half a day earlier; for the first time in his life, he wasn't suffering.

Letter From Milo: A Penny Saved....

Like the rest of the USA and the world, my family has been affected by the "Big Meltdown," a term I prefer to recession or depression. My wife and I are both self-employed and we hit the financial bust-out perfecta. She's in real estate and I'm in advertising. You know what happened to the real estate business, and the ad business is not far behind, especially when several of your clients are also real estate agencies.

A lot of our recent family discussions have been about ways to cut spending. We include our two daughters, 16 and 21, in these discussions because we figure it's important that they understand the rotten financial situation we're in. Not much gets settled at these family round tables, but at least everyone gets a chance to voice an opinion and present money saving ideas.

Mom: How about we cut out cable TV?

Kid 1: (Indignantly) No way. I'm not giving up MTV.

Dad: (Also indignant) I can't believe you're asking me to give up watching the Bulls.

Mom: What if we sell one of the cars?

Kid 2: You can't be serious. Do you really expect me to ride the el and buses everywhere I go?

Dad: (Reasonably) Now, now. Let's not get upset. We're simply discussing options.

Kid 1: Here's an option. Why don't you and Mom quit drinking so much wine?

Dad: (Angrily) Don't be a wiseass.

Mom: Ungrateful brat.

Kid 2: Now who's upset?

Dad: Let's all calm down. (Pathetic attempt at humor) Here's an idea. Let's sell the cat and dog to the Korean restaurant down the street.

Mom: (Aghast) That's a horrible thing to say.

Kid 1: That's not even close to funny, Dad. It's just gross.

Dad: Just lightening the mood, trying to make everyone feel better.

Kid 2: Want to make us all feel better? Quit smoking. What do cigarettes cost anyway?

Dad: (Grumbling and obscenities)

In the end, we came up with a money saving solution that satisfied almost everyone. Dad got taken off of the health insurance policy. Being self-employed, we pay for health insurance out of our pockets, a little over $800 a month. That's a lot of money right now or any other time. By removing me from the policy we save nearly four hundred a month.

Fortunately, I have a health insurance option. As a veteran of the United States Army, I'm entitled to care and treatment at any veteran's hospital in the country. It's one of the perks of having risked life, limb, and sanity for my country. The only problem is that veterans' hospitals are not considered to be in the top echelon of medical facilities. I can see the conversation with my doctor now.

Me: I need brain surgery, Doc.

Doc: That's too bad.

Me: And I need a septuple heart bypass.

Doc: That's a shame.

Me: What's the prognosis?

Doc: Dude, you're probably gonna die.

The good thing, however, is that VA doctors are experienced in dealing with traumatic injuries. So if I get shot or stabbed or step on a land mine in Lincoln Park, I'll be in good hands.

I'm going down to the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center on South Damen Avenue next week to register in the system. I'll bring along my discharge papers and my good conduct medal and my dog-eared copy of the US Army Survival Manual, just in case things get rough. I'll let you know what happens.