Had to have high, high hopes for a living/Shooting for the stars when I couldn’t make a killing/Didn’t have a dime but I always had a vision/Always had high, high hopes.” – ‘High Hopes’ by Panic! At The Disco

Mental health generalizations can be extremely unhealthy. Using mental health disorders to show a character indulging in an exaggerated, repulsive manner in pop culture is a truism that can’t be denied. From causing a turmoil inside-out in depression patients to misguiding those who don’t suffer from it or may know little about it, it is becoming an unescapable reality.

Since 2019, there has been a significant rise in mental health issues, courtesy SARS-CoV-2, better known as Covid-19 and Coronavirus.

The highly infectious disease made people sick in all parts of the world and took millions of lives. Hope arrived after the positive discovery of vaccine and booster even as variants of the infectious continue to morph and appear, some less dangerous, others more so.

It did lead to limiting people to work from home, but more than that, social isolation affected healthy people who didn’t suffer from depression pre-Coronavirus.

According to World Health Organization, the 10 most depressed countries as a result are Pakistan, along with China, India, United States, Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia, Indonesia, Nigeria and Iran. A rise in depression rates has been observed.

On the other hand, the 10 least depressed countries include Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Nepal, Timor – Leste, Vanuatu, Micronesia, The Republic of Kiribati, The Kingdom of Tonga, Samoa and Laos People’s Democratic Republic.

“Mama said/Burn your biographies/Rewrite your history/Light up your wildest dreams.”

– ‘High Hopes’ by Panic! At The Disco

As more is learned about how and why depression occurs, the handbook for psychiatrists: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has been revised at least five times by the American Psychiatric Association.

The more we learn, the more we realize how little we know, creating a strange paradox, not just for doctors but for patients, colleagues, family and friends about the state of a person’s mental health.

What we do know after decades of research is that with mental health, there is often a linguistic limitation. Can you articulate just how anxious you feel in the midst of an anxiety attack? Or the hollow shadow that you feel is all always there?

Can we overcome it as individuals? Yes, depending on your will to not let it define you, the seriousness of the illness itself and asking for help and following that help, in the realization of the need for stability. Some require 24/7 supervision, while others find a way to get better.

But, not always, and at times it can be because our ability to articulate what is wrong comes with a linguistic limitation.

What the author has done,intelligently is that instead of strictly droning on and on about personal experience of depression, she has combined it with writings on the
subject by many literary giants.

“Fulfill the prophecy/Be something greater/Go make a legacy/Manifest destiny/ Back in the days/We wanted everything, wanted everything.”

‘High Hopes’ by Panic! At The Disco

For all the reasons mentioned in the article as well as for developing compassion and empathy, The Limits of My Language: Meditations on Depression by Eva Meijer is worth reading.

What the author has done, intelligently, is that instead of strictly droning on and on about personal experience of depression, she has combined it with writings on the subject by many literary giants.

So, if you’re unable to explain the hollowness you feel or ungratefulness followed by guilt for having everything and still feeling depressed enough to avoid the universe, you’re not alone and neither is Eva Meijer.

As you read this thin essay, a blessing in this multi-tasking world, you will find philosophers, thinkers and steadfast voices as well as Eva sharing her narrative.

From the overrated Sigmund Freud (and that’s just a personal observation), to Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, William Styron, Fernando Pessoa, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf and many others, Eva takes us through her life while using words by these and several other philosophers and thinkers to articulate what has been the subject of interest to many.

“The world around me became a different world, in which things wouldn’t simply turn out well, in which it was actually more likely that they’d never turn out well again.”

She connects this description to Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea, “in which the main character, Roquentin, has exactly the same feeling of pointlessness.”

In another section, Eva expresses how falling in love for the first time, “can create a sense of limitlessness; feeling is something that flows out from you, in every direction. Life’s lack of meaning can present itself in this way too…” adding further, “I thought things would never get better, that I’d always feel that way, and in addition of the various feelings of guilt I had, I was constantly thinking about death.”

Not something easy to admit. But this feeling of connection to death rather that life, is not something that hasn’t been explored in tenets of history, philosophy, literature and liberal sciences.

Albert Camus, a French philosopher, author, dramatist and journalist, who was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, making him the second-youngest recipient in history questioned the meaning of life and death in his works, particularly The Myth of Sisyphus.

With due diligence, Eva explores Camus’ works and notes how he wondered in The Myth of Sisyphus whether life was purely meaningless (or just not worth living). Camus found it chaotic, arbitrary, absurd, unreasonably silent, without purpose and so on.

Issues that fall within the world of depression drenched Eva through the course of life. And those tough questions are addressed and divided into chapters.

From names such as ‘Philosophical and concrete suicide’ to ‘Medicines and social justice’ to ‘empty present’, The Waves’ and ‘Too sad to tell you’come like trigger warnings. So, avoid the first one if you’re in a suicidal state and tell someone immediately but if you’re (to paraphrase Bruce Springsteen’s hit song), ‘dancing in the dark’ but not a danger to yourself or others, you can read that chapter.

The Limits of My Language is also engaging because at its heart is a narrative of a person who shows various facets of the illness, what prominent intellectuals have said about it while sharing a life story. It is certainly not an account of a depressed person that goes nowhere. As you continue to read, there are anecdotes as well from the need of therapy to natural cures like exercise.

Is it the story of just a rising illness? No. The prose is so beautifully written that Eva feels like the person who articulated what many feel but don’t know how to express it including self-hatred and gut-wrenching guilt. There is, using what is well-known phrase, light at the end of the tunnel, a silver lining for even those who cannot see anything except the looming darkness, hollow days and sleepless nights. Must-read.

– Available at Liberty Books