Banking against the blues

Call me Pollyanna, but I still think that there is something a little 'block party' about living in Jerusalem.

By ANDREA SIMANTOV
So one day I'm confiding to my psychotherapist-friend Mordie that when I'm really overwhelmed and can't see the forest through the trees, the "blues" grab me so hard, I shake; that perhaps I'm really suffering from depression and the battle to remain upbeat is futile because, just maybe, I have a chemical imbalance. I'm not talking about the big things that funk me out; I'm talking about a stubborn leg rash that won't heal, a forgotten expense showing up on the bank statement, an unpleasant disagreement with my ex-husband, a child not honoring his curfew. These are not the things that cause women like me to pull a Sylvia Plath now, are they? Mordie gently reproached me and said, "People bandy about the word 'depression.' Don't do it. If someone you loved were battling that disease, your life would be in constant turmoil. We are equipped to weather life's ups and downs but because everything now is 'immediate,' we can't feel the difference between disappointments and dangers. There is a 'pill' or antidote for everything. What ever happened with riding out - 'doing the work'?" His response reminded me of an article that I read in The New York Times which described a man walking into the office of the psychiatrist-author and reporting that he's been feeling really down for the last month because his fiancée left him for another man and he doesn't see the point of living. He can't sleep, eat or work and has no interest in anything. The doctor debates whether to diagnose the patient as clinically depressed and subsequently prescribe him Prozac or Zoloft, or to base treatment on the understanding that the fellow in question is experiencing what the 14th-century monk Thomas a Kempis called "the proper sorrows of the soul." The article was long and the posited theories too complicated to discuss in so short a space. What I found most interesting, however, was the ensuing analysis of the over-medicating of normal sadness, and the failure to consider the social and emotional context in which people develop low moods. The author claims that by not addressing the ordinariness of typical gloom that follows losing a job or someone you love, the mental health community has diagnostically failed and created an "epidemic" of increasing depression. After reading the article I began to think about loneliness and depression. After all, so many stories are written about the isolation people feel in this highly technical, primarily cyber world. The more sophisticated we become, the less likelihood of discovering the multi-generational households of yesterday. Call me Pollyanna, but I still think that there is something a little "block party" about living in Jerusalem. Whether I'm sitting in a German Colony café or buying a fresh bottle of ginkgo biloba on Rehov Agrippas, there is always someone to talk to and I don't just mean "nice weather out there" kind of chit-chat. I mean that everyone I meet is a potential friend and that there is a quirky, small-town quality about life here. And while there are times that I choose to be alone, I honestly believe that in Jerusalem one never need be alone. There is an electric spirit in the air, and I find that when the news is upbeat (rare), the folks around me are smiling and we are all smiling the same smile. On the flip-side, when Israel is having a sad day (frequent), I don't have to look too far to feel empathetic camaraderie from my fellow bus passengers and tomato-squeezers; we carry the same weight in our communal heart. Last week I cut my nose. It happened as a result of one of those dumb household accidents that only occur 90 minutes before Shabbat when you have scheduled guests for dinner and haven't, yet, put a thing in the oven. Two of my sous-chef children decided that the dessert menu needed spiffing up. Upon discovering a bruised mango in the fridge and a bag of frozen strawberries in the freezer, they shouted in unison, "Sorbet!" Well, let me inform you that the strawberries have to defrost a bit because if they don't, the blades can get stuck. "Mom, the food processor is stuck. We can't move the blade." I stopped hanging laundry and unplugged the machine. That was the only responsible thing I did. Placing my fingers in the bowl - vigilantly maneuvering so I wouldn't cut myself - I twisted and turned, pushed and pulled. Nothing budged until - lo and behold - the cylinder and blade flew out and hit me in the face. I felt my eyeglasses careen across the room and winced from the viscous mango-strawberry mixture that began to ooze down my forehead and across my cheeks. Laughingly I said, "Kappara on the sherbet. See what happens when you mess with Shabbat?" The children were staring at me because, it seems, I'd gotten cut. Along with icy, pureed fruit, I could feel the warm blood over my lip but, in truth, nothing hurt. Nevertheless, I allowed myself to be pushed into the car. An Arab woman in the waiting room was called inside but hearing that we were tense about Shabbat said, "Please, you go ahead." Thanking her profusely, I darted through the glass doors. It wasn't supposed to be funny, but my daughter laughed as she described to the doctors what had occurred. It was good that I was already lying down when they took the towel off because when I saw the cut in the mirror, I almost lost consciousness. The cut began at the center of my right nostril, crossed beneath the septum and under the entire left nostril, ending halfway up the curve of my nose. It was such a shallow cut, however, that it only needed antiseptic and a bandage. I frantically ran back to the car while barking cell phone orders to the kids back home. My daughter had just put the key into the ignition when a doctor banged on the window and shouted, "When was your last tetanus shot?" Yes, I went back inside. A bandaged nose coupled with bank statements written in red, a bad cholesterol report, a broken brake light, root canal upon root canal and never-ending battles of the skirt lengths in my daughters' closets are enough to warrant staying in bed for hours after the alarm clock rings. The aforementioned are all triggers for sadness and even lethargy. As Mordie also said, "For every 'down,' you seem to have three 'ups.' Why don't you start counting and, on a bad day, take some 'cash' from the 'up bank' and pay it against the blues?" He's right. Despite an occasional crummy episode, when it comes to blessings, things are good. Even if I do look like Jack Nicholson in Chinatown.