THE MAN UPSTAIRS

by Dan Littleford

One was the drumbeat of reason. The other, the din of depression.

They chaperoned my coming out from toddler to adult, miles apart in nature--but springing from identical roots: The tendrils of the consummate dysfunctional family.

My more benign compatriot, reason, found itself fertilized in the house of my grandfather, an Episcopal minister. The household was rife with Scripture-spewing, and a vile stench from just beneath the floorboards--indicating practices which made a mockery of every hosanna uttered. A splintering eventually uncovered these rancid hypocrisies, leading my dad to a rejection of the church and the sanctimonious sermons saturating his upbringing. Thus, my salad days were defined by a contrasting credo. Skepticism reigned as the golden rule, with rationality the only altar worth bowing before. God was relegated to an obscurity in Webster's, and the cross a tacky trinket you'd buy at a flea market.

Reason soon staked its claim as the pillar of my philosophy, and I came to cherish it as a valued friend. It was at my side always, exposing the most minuscule detour from logic's straight and narrow. In the seventies, we ridiculed Captain Kirk's unfathomable ability to talk any computer into pulling its own plug. In the eighties, we pilloried the delusional depths drilled by trickle down economics. And in the nineties, we panned a blockbuster's dogfight between Air Force jet and alien craft presumably a good millennia more advanced.

But for provoking sheer venom, nothing rivaled the institution of the church. With each morsel of information I ingested, the bile welled ever-higher.

Centuries of pocket-lining papacies. Relentless demonizings of any Galileo and the enlightenment they'd represent. An unending stream of bloodletting demagogues employing Christian virtue as their crimson- stained sword. Jim and Tammy Faye's conning the gullible into bankruptcy to furnish their opulent empires. Pat Robertson's promoting the principles of compassion while denouncing the evils of homosexuality. Ralph Reed's pushing for pro-life politicos devoted to the dismemberment of the Brady Bill. It was a breeding ground for the utterly detestable.

Of course, from this soil would occasionally bloom a Doctor King, or Bishop Tutu, or any number of faceless volunteers giving their all to the starving and needy. But the stalks of the selfless seemed forever overrun by the thickets of the self-serving.

And all utterances of faith--any alludings to some higher intelligence--grew perpetually intertwined with the pulpit as power- mongering platform, and the promise of Heaven as enticing bait.

Besides, an entity who creates existence with a snap of a finger? Who needs fairy tales when you've got reason as your anthology?

Depression too preceded my entry into the world--spawning in the septic gene pools infesting both sides of my clan. The one commonality between lineages could be glimpsed in flashes of short-circuiting sparks, illuminating a multitude of misfiring neurons. The burn marks from these seared wirings of the brain weren't exactly difficult to detect. Substance abuse? Pastime without peer. Suicidal tendencies? Adept at making the rounds. Antidepressants? An encyclopedia's worth. Dad was bludgeoned by bouts of despair, and Mom was hospitalized by an attempted overdose. No tutoring was required for this voice to set up shop in my head; Chemistry was the only invitation needed.

Obviously, it qualified as a far less welcome tenant. Each stage of my maturation was signified by the scarred signpost of despondency. As a prepubescent, it was the terror engendered by any unfamiliar school, so crippling I'd lock myself tight in the car. As a teenager, it was the nocturnal sobbings to Karen Carpenter, setting the needle to "I'll Say Goodbye to Love" again and again. As a young adult, it was the self- punishing slicings of a razor across my wrist, stopping just short of puncturing a vein and creating a bloody mess.

Like my more amiable soul mate, depression was never far off. My chronology served as a testing ground for every cure conceivable. A revolving door of shrink's couches. Prozac's slew of younger and older cousins. Electroshock sessions galore. All amounted to zilch. I began to feel like Scrooge's Marley, damned to an eternity of backbreaking chains.

Only mine grew heavier with each passing season.

In some respects, depression can be envisioned as Dante's nightmarish abyss. It's a chasm proliferating with jagged levels, each descending to a realm deeper and darker than the last. And I had spent a lifetime lost amidst its downward spiral. Eventually, journey's end must be reached...and hell entered.

Finally, in the summer of ninety-five, I could battle no longer. I plunged into this purgatorial nether world--and into a headlong collision with the ideology embodying my entire essence.

The locale was Manhattan, but the tale was of two cities. Outside, I trod a teeming metropolis where everything was coming up roses. Years of exasperating apartment hunts had achieved exquisite fruition--in the form of a one-bedroom in the Village's heart for an astounding three ninety-five a month. A romantic draught stretching back to graduation had dissolved in a euphoric couldburst of dalliances and relationships. My career was in full gallop on a fast track to top copywriter, at an agency actually valuing its staff as much as its clients. And I was socially blessed with a treasured inner circle, a bulwark of support in good times or bad.

Inside, I wandered a different sprawl--with spires quickly crumbling and each rose withering away. New York's frenetic frenzy had devolved from rousing roller-coaster to seething steam boiler. My perch upon the ladder of success was buckling under pressure's poundage. And the occasional wading ponds of bar-hoppings and drink-swillings had crescendoed into a churning drowning pool, a swirl in endless evenings and throbbing mornings.

The despair bubbled inexorably upward, like the molten magma of a human Mount Vesuvius. But the day the eruption came, no great cities lay in ruins. Just me.

The clinical terminology is "debilitating depression", and I can coin but one description that does it any genuine justice: You had to be there. It's as if a monstrous black hole has breached your psyche, swallowing up all sustenance which makes life palatable. Every scrap of joy. Every sliver of vigor. Every crumb of serenity. Gone. What remains is emptiness. Utter and total. I could strive to define the state. Misery. Grief. Anguish. But nothing comes remotely close.

It simply defies words.

My emotional collapse was complete. I retreated from the concrete caverns to Mom's placid parcel in the Connecticut woods. I cut all cords to my cherished circle--out of both shame, and the unendurable exhaustion accompanying the briefest exchange. The slightest stabs at concentration exposed a desolate, dry well; The act of writing, my perennially soothing salve, was consigned to the recesses of distant echoes. The hours were reduced to hollow stares at the tube and limp cruisings through the remote. The crap occupying my gaze didn't matter. Of paramount importance was the avoidance of bedding down, until intense drowsiness would assure a swift doze off to slumber.

When sleep wasn't immediate in coming, the imagery was--a multiplex of twisted trailers featuring death as star and myself as expendable extra. In an existence now ensconced in agony, only in screenings of its end could any solace be scrounged. All I wanted was to die. But each visualized shot to the skull evoked a volley of daggers through the heart, inevitably smelted in suicide's cinders. The suffering itself wouldn't perish; It would merely be shunted to those closest to me. The prospect was unbearable.

And so I was trapped. Every night brought a barrage of pillow-hushed wailings--and weepings so convulsive guts seemingly spilled out with the tears. As the weeks mounted, so did the desperation. Until finally...the unthinkable beckoned.

Reason had befriended me when the world was new. It had served as the voice of trust. My philosophy had been constructed upon its steely foundations, anchored in the staunch ethos of seeing is believing. But little by little, I found those girders eroding; Rationality had proven no match for depression's surging seas. The only salvation in sight lay in a single, heretical act--one razing the altar I had so long worshiped before, and embracing the one I had so long scorned.

I clasped hands together...and prayed.

And steadfast friend became stubborn foe.

Each prayer would begin with a leap of faith. Each would end with an admission that the bound was beyond me. With every overture to a heavenly host spurt a squall of unyielding scrutiny, sweeping away the scarcely-whispered words. Civilization swarms with non-monotheistic sects. Who are we to say that they're wrong? The earth can be likened to bare seedling in the scope of cosmic time and space. What are the odds that the galaxies teem with Omnipotent-exalting races? Science has woven an impressive tapestry interlacing reality's countless threads. Where's the evidence that the stitchery was sewn by a divine hand?

I didn't require an actual in-the-celestial-flesh entity--only a glimmer of hope that such an ear could be out there. But reason had risen to a towering peak I just couldn't surmount, with an omniscient creator resembling a square peg hammered into a round hole; It simply didn't fit.

I had made the monumental decision to give myself to God. And I had come away with frustration, a once reverence-arousing ally who now aroused only bitterness, and a resigned recognition that some people weren't born to be born again.

Obviously, some substantial changes have occurred since--else I'd be fixed on Geraldo rather than my desktop. Most of my inner circle has been reintroduced to my presence. TV has shriveled from clock-consuming calling to occasional avocation. And writing's cathartic compositions have been greeted back with grateful arms. Most important, the black hole at my core has seen its maw dwindle and its appetite ebb. The emptiness has largely receded, and fulfillment has largely returned.

A miracle? Only of modern medicine.

Salvation appeared in the form of my umpteenth anti-depressant. The difference was...this one worked. Within several weeks, the gloom began to evaporate, and shafts of sun to materialize. I have yet to complete my crawl from despair's pit--merely reaching a level where a peer upwards reveals more than limitless twilight. Perhaps depression's clatterings in my head will never be fully muted. But life no longer carries the status of curse, and reason no longer carries the mantle of enemy. For the moment, that's enough.

However, it's difficult to emerge from such an experience carting the same perspectives you lugged in. While rationality has resumed its role as welcome voice, its mutterings have mellowed in their rigidity. The church itself doesn't garner quite the same contempt, but still generates a sizable share of uncompromising leeriness. In the palms of the noble, it can accomplish great good. But today, as always, the ignoble palms seem to boast the advantage--with zealotry, bigotry, and intolerance being the paramount accomplishments.

But faith itself has been released from the shackles of the pulpit's puritanical posings. We live in a reality lorded over by chaos theory and survival of the fittest. Its long and winding road is one often pockmarked by painful potholes. As I learned the hard way, to sidestep these ensnaring craters sometimes requires a step beyond--beyond logic's dominion, to a domain where a supreme guide steers you through the bumpy bypaths. Stripped of religion's dogmatism, in faith's kernel resides a simple belief: That maybe there is a force out there greater than ourselves. I suppose it's kind of a security blanket, but one I sure has hell could have used. And these days, there's no sin in seeking comfort wherever you can find it.

So, though reason endures as my solemn soul mate, we reserve our venom for the Christian Coalitions of the world...and not for an assumption of an Almighty.

He'll just never be my man upstairs.

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Last Updated: December 8, 1996