Do I want to get well?

2003-05-16 at 12:31 a.m.

Well, further to my musings about getting well a few entries ago, I've been wondering about the "community of the sick".

Like quite a few other people, I'm a member of a support group, an online one in my case, http://gabrielle.self-injury.net. Now, its been very helpful, and the people on there are great and all but...

If we start to identify with our illness, what happens when we get better?

I mean, if I base part of my personal identity on being a "cutter" and being depressed, what will happen when and if I cease to be either of those things? Will the remoulding of my personal identity start it all off again? Or will I resist getting better for fear of losing part of my identity?

Do we want to get well?

If you identify with an underground-type group, a group with a special thing in common, I can't imagine it would be very nice to be removed from that group, whether you're well or not. Of course, you could always belong to a group of recovered whatevers, but would it be the same? If you form friendships based on your illness, then you're going to become different, become Other to your friends, should you become better. That strikes me as leading to a determination not to get better.

Not that depression is exactly a barrel of laughs. Its unpleasant, living in misery, being unable to do anything in particular, but it does create stronger and deeper connections with those suffering from the same thing. Because you're all fragile, you're all going through the same thing, you can end up feeling you know people better than anyone else because you share that in common. That simply won't be the same once you're well again.

Take my friends Lynn, Shirley and Gillian. Every one of them has been on anti-depressants at one time or another, they've all been through what I'm going through. But they're out the other side, and better now, and even though I know them in real life, rather than on the internet, I don't feel such a fundamental friendship with them as I do from people who are still in the stage I am going through. Now maybe once I'm well, I'll find that same thing in friendships with other people who are now ok, but maybe I won't.

I'm worried that I don't really want to get well, because I'll cease to be the person I now am. Its a partial death, losing an element of your identity like that. And perhaps a regression to an earlier stage of my personality. Neither of which are exactly appealing. Strange, really, the idea of actual death, of ceasing to live, is far more attractive than the idea of part of my personality dying.

Even though I, like most people I imagine, desperately want to be well, and not to be feeling appalling all of the time, there is still a part of me which doesn't really want to get well for fear of losing associated benefits.

But even if I acknowledge that, what does it mean? Does it mean that, knowing that, I decide not to get well? But the thing is, I don't want to be depressed either! And I don't exactly like cutting (most of the time). But if I don't want to get well....it has to be one or the other, doesn't it? I suppose, looking at it objectively, I'd have to say that "there must be a third way," (shades of Tony Blair.....aaiiee!) "there must be a way of forging a new personality, a new 'me' which shares characteristics and understandings with the person I am now and the person I was before I became depressed (this time)." Maybe thats true, but maybe its just a symptom of my search for the middle way in all things (useful in essays, but not so useful otherwise).

I don't know of a solution to this, maybe one will turn up along the road. As per usual, there are only two choices - stuggle on, day by day, waiting for something to turn up, or die. Those are always the only choices I can see. There have been a number of times when I've chosen the latter, but right now.....I can deal with the day-by-day idea. That may change, but right now is what matters.

-Blaed

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