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Perspectives of Death From A Diagnosed Mad Man

by Benji Brite

March 2011

I once told a doctor, after some prodding, that I felt my biggest mental health issue was the fact that I didn't receive the inherent ability to ignore the fact that I was one day going to die. She told me that was common, handed me a prescription for Klonipin and Zoloft, and shooed me away.

The difference between necrophobia and other fears is that almost any other happening, chance encounter, horrible befalling or the like, can be prevented. If you're afraid of snakes, it's simple enough to steer clear of the reptile house. If you're certain of your imminent demise in a twisted, fiery, car crash; walk.

Most mornings I'm no more than a retched dichotomy of man. One part lust for life, one part fear of death, half creation, half demise. It's common, an unexceptional mix that most people feel sums them up neatly. Unfortunately that's not my case. For me death is a constant thought, a nagging injury, a limp. The kind from a bullet wound, not the kind from a sprain.

In the seventh grade my family moved. I was shipped to some school even farther into the land of Regan and racism than I thought could exist. It was flanked on two sides by a cemetery; an easy three hundred bodies worth of fear, discreetly covered by granite. As a child it's hard to understand a constant fear of death. You just cry a lot, and if your me, you don't do it in front of people. Every morning you play sick, and in a sense you are, but it's mostly an attempt to spend a day away from being surrounded by death. This act gets old with parents real fast, and like most things that people don't understand it gets dealt with poorly. So instead of getting better, I just spent most days being sore as well as afraid. I never did say anything. Not that speaking up would have helped. This was before Prosac and a sensitivity toward mental health issues was fashionable. They never did become fashionable for my dad, and life was hard enough without him thinking I was a pussy.

Thanks to my mom's family, my idea of death at the time was centered around a bearded man in a white robe who ruled over a magical kingdom in the sky. The alternative to this particular afterlife is of course a land that my minister grandfather described to me as an immense dump, ruled by a large, scaly, fallen angel, who hated all things good. He said the flames came from burning debris. More like a tire fire and less like the center of the earth. From what I could tell by the pictures, Satan must have put in hay by hand, or ate really big salads. Either way, neither afterlife seemed as appealing as the life I currently had.

When I was younger depression would come and go, sometimes hibernating for years before it resurfaced. It was a cruel torture, like losing your lottery winnings playing Indian bingo. You were probably better off just staying poor. The emotional swings were beyond great. Once a friend of mine described it as having your girlfriend dump you repeatedly. All I could think was that his girlfriends must have been way better than mine.

At seventeen death made a comeback. Like some forgotten, overexposed, celebrity he did his best to reinvent himself. No longer was he a man in a robe or a scaly monster. He wasn't a he, he was it, and it was nothing. The sadness was the same. I hid a lot. It was summer, that made it easier. Unfortunately, I must not have been as good at it. My mom caught me in the shop crying over a vice. I was never good at lying, besides my Mom was smart, theres no way she would have believed that I was that upset over the piston from a Volkswagen Beatle.

Fortunately by this time the Prosac era was in full swing, and thankfully my mom was on board. I still balked at a doctor, and wanted nothing to do with pills. I got them anyway. A cycle took two weeks to kick in. I spent that two weeks on the floor in front of the sliding glass door.

Antidepressants aren't something I enjoy. As far as drugs go, they rank somewhere between cocaine thats been stepped on until it tastes like something you could use to start a car, and meth. They're barely a necessary evil. A trade off at best, based on what one's idea of what functionality is. It's good to be off the floor, but the man standing isn't the man on the floor. Then who is the man standing? Who is the man on the floor? Is that me or is this me? Is that you god, it's me, the the guy who can't stop talking to himself. This point of contention is the last thing I need during an episode of depression. Another philosophical question inside an overworked brain. The fear is gone but the confusion is unbearable. I always end up giving up on antidepressants. This opens me up for another episode. It doesn't take a psychiatrist to see how this becomes cyclical.

My favorite side effect of depression is the manic episode. This usually happens when I can't close my eyes due to the thoughts racing around behind them. I can stay up for days, six is my record. You get a lot done, but to me it's never enough. This is the nature of the beast. Being fully aware that your time is finite makes you overachieve. It also makes up for the times that I spend two weeks laying in front of the sliding door. Working incessantly is also the only way to tire myself out enough to sleep. These periods are generally when I produce my best work: meaningful paintings and sketches, well written songs, ridiculous ideas, half of which end up being good. There has to be a way to collect moisture from around a moving car so that your windshield washer fluid never runs out.

I woke up on a Monday when I was twenty-five to realize that the world was a different place than the one I fell asleep in. I knew where I was, but it was distinctly different. I recognized my home much the way you recognize places in your dreams, even when they're different. This is one of the few things besides death that ever genuinely scared me. At the time I had been healthy for a few years which only made it worse. I was no longer accustomed to being afraid, and I was a pussy about it.

I drove past intersections and landmarks that I knew, I recognized them, but they looked and felt different. My vision was noticeably blurry. My boss thought I had a stroke, and I was starting to agree with him. I called my mom.

At the hospital I got into a shouting match with a doctor that barely spoke english. I figure the word asshole was muttered a few times. Who knows, I still don't speak Hindi. I wasn't buying the diagnosis. Apparently it's common for depression to manifest itself as anxiety as you age, and this was my problem. I explained to him loudly that I must be “one anxious motherfucker.” He told me to relax in english. I left with antidepressants.

Unlike the depression, the pills did little more than nothing for my anxiety. Six months into feeling like the Mad Hatter on a huffing bender, I ditched the meds again. Ultimately through either a self righting of my brain, or exposure to the point of familiarity, I got back to being as normal as I could be in a land I recognized. Or, maybe not. I suppose it's possible that I'm still just as fucked up, but being fucked up is my new normal. I try not to think about it.

The opposite of the manic episode is more akin to narcolepsy than depression. I end up spending days sleeping. My brain shuts down and takes my body with it. I have dreams about frightening highways; off ramps one hundred feet high without guard rails. Below them I see only fog and clouds. I always drive off the side. For some reason it reminds me of Austin.

I've had one recurring dream since I was a kid. I have it consistently when I go into a good depression/anxiety slumber. I'm walking up a long road to a crest. There is always a group of people with me but I'm never sure who. Behind me I turn to see the road we've travelled. When I turn back there is a wolf that walks on two legs. When I turn back to the road I can see my traveling companions miles below me. I'm alone with the wolf. I don't wake up, but he never eats me.

Two years ago I died. Or at least I got all of the sensation with none of the side effects. After getting a feeling that can only be described as being executed with an electrical sword, my body went numb. Starting with my fingers it worked its way into my chest. Once my breathing began to feel useless I made my way outside and simply laid back in the grass. Thinking about dying a lot gave me the opportunity to decide how I wanted to do it. Looking up at an off-white hospital ceiling didn't make the list. There were no flashbacks, no reliving of my life, no cliches about anger and acceptance, just fear.

I dug my fingers into the dirt and thought about the things I had accomplished. The list was short. Mostly I figured that at best I had coined a couple of funny colloquialisms. I didn't take the time to gauge whether this was acceptable as lifetime achievement. Thinking about it now it's better that I didn't. I doubt the world will ever widely use the term “twildo” for double sided marital aides, or call foolishness “old fashioned dip-shittery.” I came to terms with the fact that they can't all be gems.

In between gasping for breath I told the family hovering over me (who wasn't mine by blood) that I loved them, I wasn't lying. I saw Gene cry for the first time. I felt bad for him. His son had a heart attack six months before and here I was dying in front of him. It was inconsiderate.

I mumbled a quick apology to the people who weren't there, said a prayer to a generic deity, told Gene to have my mom bury me in a black t-shirt and a pair of Chuck Taylors, closed my eyes and died.

I woke up a couple of times in the ambulance. They said I was coherent the whole time. A large injection of something restored my breathing. I spent a few hours in the hospital getting tests, they didn't find anything. I got some more antidepressants and was sent home. The next day I wrote myself a eulogy. It's full of gems.

I still go back and forth with the meds. At three hundred a month it's hardly worth the ambiguity I feel. I get referred to therapy a lot, sometimes I go. They ask me about triggers. I tell them my worst panic attack came during an episode of Hogan's Heros and inquire about whether or not T.V. Land is evil. I get crickets. Psychologists don't have great senses of humor, that doesn't stop me from mocking them. The one prescription that does work is the hardest to get. They won't write refills due to its classification as a narcotic. I tell them to look at my refill records before they insinuate that I'm a junkie. Again the humor escapes them. Maybe they feel it's better for my health to wait in a room full of sick people just to get them to write me another.

The experience of feeling death didn't help with the fear. It was exactly as frightening as I thought it would be, but I still don't want to go in my sleep. It did help with my sense of accomplishment though. Like normalcy, accomplishments are subjective. If I cure rectal cancer I'll probably just lay dying, complaining about how I could never get my melanoma vaccine together.

Accomplishments aside, laying on the grass, looking at the sky, and being surrounded by loved ones is still how I'd prefer to go out, seeing as being fornicated to death by a cloned, twenty two year old Joni Mitchell, while she performs Miles of Aisles acoustically is probably out of the realm of possibility. Subjective or not, that's an accomplishment.

My name is Benji Brite. I grew up outside of Athens Ohio, a small college town in the Appalachian region. Currently I live in Denver, CO where I have a small shop where I do custom motorcycle and auto work.