Spilling Milk

Hey my little bloggarillos!

I’ve decided that one of the things I’ll be doing on here will be writing about mental health. It might help, you know?

Today we begin by discussing our mistakes, and depression.

There’s a great problem with mistakes: they generally only become apparent after the fact. This is, of course, a generalisation, some mistakes are perfectly clear before we make them and we either take steps to avoid them, or continue anyway, with the full knowledge that we are mistaken. Most of the time, however, we find ourselves on the other side of a mistake, crestfallen, perhaps ashamed, looking back at the chaos that was our mistake. The realisation may dawn slowly or suddenly, but we are always left with that bottom-falling-out-of-out-stomachs feeling.

Some mistakes are minor and easily rectified. I put salt in my tea, instead of sugar and now have to make more tea. I didn’t put cheese in the cream sauce and now have to put it back in the pan to finish it. The proverbial favourite is of course, I split some milk and now have to clean it up.

Surviving the devastation, however, is not always pretty. I transferred this month’s rent into the wrong account, cannot get that money back, and do not have any money left with which to pay rent. I spoke or acted thoughtlessly and hurt my partner, and now they cannot look at me without feeling sickened. I tripped the wrong switch and activated SKYNET, and now humanity may be doomed.

The distinctions between the above examples are clear. I split the mil, but at least the machines aren’t rising up to kill us all. Perspective (and proverb) tells us not to cry over the split milk.

Imagine, for a moment, that you have spilt some milk. What would you think and feel? Your internal script might read:

“Gosh, that’s so annoying! Now I have to clean up this mess and get more milk.”

and nary another through beyond that. The milk spilt, it was cleaned up and that was that.

What happens then, when spilling milk is raised to the level of “doomed all of humanity”? It seems silly, doesn’t it? It’s just milk, it’s not really that important, in the end. As I stated above, we have perspective. Removing that perspective is where the problem lies.

Say you had just unleashed SKYNET, doomed all of humanity, and decided that you really needed a cup of milky tea. Your hands work without conscious thought, the rest of you is numb from what’s just happened. As your movements become sluggish, you lose your grip on the milk just for a fraction of a second. Staring down at the puddle of milk surrounding the (perhaps broken) jug, the world stops. Everything vanishes but you and the milk. Your vision goes out of focus; you become overly-aware of your breathing or heartbeat. And then that first thought runs through your mind.

“I spilt the milk.”

That one thought quickly becomes an avalanche. “After everything else, you’re going to spill the milk?” “That was the last milk jug!” “Of course you can’t manage a milk jug, you’re so incompetent that you’ve doomed all of humanity!” and so on, and so on and so on, until you can feel nothing up but the motional weight of dooming all of humanity (and spilling the milk) pressing down into the centre of your chest.

That is depression.

Even when there may be no legitimate reason to feel the weight of doomed humanity, you will. Even if the only thing you’ve done wrong is spill milk, the feeling remains. You may as well have set off SKYNET. That feeling of suspension, right before the thoughts and feelings come crashing down, is practically a respite, and genuine happiness is a balloon you saw floating up in the clouds without you.

This removal of perspective even affects your ability to think rationally enough to regain it. Gaining perspective of an issue is no longer as case of turning on “Rational Mode” and putting things to bed. You can crank “Rational Mode” up to PZ Meyers levels and still get nowhere. Your perspective isn’t there. It’s chained up inside a box of bullet-proof glass covered in a one-inch steel plate, buried in concrete on a platform floating above an electrified lake full of hungry sharks, surrounded by lava. And all of your bones are broken.

Sometimes, you’re lucky enough to grab hold of your perspective before it disappears. Sometimes, all you can do is curl up and cry.