Books & Depression. It’s easier than you think

by Justina Dobush

Translated from the Ukrainian by Yulia Lyubka

1.

It lasts for more than a year: I can't read, that is, I can, but I don't want to. My appetite is already gone halfway into the book. I count every page I have read and still need to read. I can't wait for the count to show 0. Books surround me everywhere: they are my job, and without them, I am nobody. I feel like an old, impotent man among many beautiful women, none of whom he can fuck. I touch them, feel them, and want them, but something stops me from entering them, even though I know how good it will be inside them. Books, books, books, am I sick of you, or are you sick of me? What happened between us?

When I was 19 and getting treated for depression, bibliotherapy was the best medicine. Kafka after Kafka, Camus after Camus, Sartre after Sartre, I tried to feel as much pain as humanity could absorb, and it helped. To feel the whole palette of despair, to experience the death of others again and again, to let go of everything that has accumulated over the years. And now? There is only the cold feeling of unread pages and a phone constantly glowing from notifications, luring me into the world of the blue screen. My therapist says that my inability to read books is another symptom and a psychological problem as if my unconscious mind decided that not reading is my best punishment for myself, for it had put a barrier in my head. Is it fair? Can my unconscious mind be such a bitch? I know too well what a pleasure it would be to read all those existentialists. I would be bleeding out with other people's pain and crying my heart out with blinding tears. But I can't. I cannot. Can not. I can't even describe how my inability to read itches, burns, and eats away at me. My therapist says that after I have realized the problem, everything will be alright. But how? I say, "Stop punishing yourself; books are not to blame, like all those writers whose interviews you cannot pass to the editor". I say, "Break the phone, open a book, and you'll feel better." I say, "If you can’t live and endure your own life – read about somebody else's." I say, "If you want to do away with yourself, first finish those unread books that you left behind on your desk and in your guest room.” I say, "Save yourself, because no one else will do it for you." I say, I say, I say, but I don’t hear.

Every week, I count the books I’ve read until that point in the year. Every week, I try to count how much more I won’t have time to read. I look at them every week and promise them a better future, but they are silent. They seem to be deliberately silent. They remain silent, condemning me. They remain silent; they don't entice me, so I have something to hold on to. And I understand them, I'm not worth half of them. And who is worthy of books in this rotten world, where writers make up the plot only to make bank in the end?  We forget about books, and it serves us right. Fires will burn us along with all our unread books. The ocean will flood us with all the pages that have not been opened.

We, readers, imagined ourselves as gods who decided we could make anything convenient, adjust books to our gadgets, and listen to them instead of reading. I want to turn into a madman, take a big bell in my hands, go out to the city's main street, and shout: Repent! The judgment day is coming soon, and we will pay for our sins. The end of the book is close! But who am I to transmit my sins to all mankind? I'm drowning, and there isn't a single book to hold on to. No Steppenwolf, The Romantic Egoist, or The Catcher in the Rye, there is nothing and nobody. 

And what can I do with myself? Cut my veins with sharp pages? Kill myself with a bookcase? I wish there were at least one book to say: "Don't reproach yourself and don't punish yourself, we are here, we have always been there for you, do not expect too much, relax, we will live longer than your depression". My only one, let me find you. I'm choking. S.O.S.


2.

And here goes bam-сlack-knock, for accepting the problem is the first step to recovery, and the second one is thinking about the causes of the problem. So here it is, the second step. In 2015, the New Yorker wrote about how books help cope with one's emotional experiences – this is called bibliotherapy. The essence of this therapy, which began to be developed actively in the early 20th century (though known to mankind since ancient times), lies in the fact that you can regain your faith in life, change your behavior, or get rid of your negative attitudes, emotions, and experiences through extensive reading. The author of the New Yorker article emphasizes the need to read fiction because it also has a good effect on our brains and our understanding of others, ourselves, and the world. Emphasizing the detrimental nature of all the books imposed on us by trends, it recommends that we consult a professional librarian who will give us his or her "best" book list – a good business venture if you ask me. A couple of days ago, I also came across a list of books to overcome depression. Below, I wanted to comment in capital letters: IF ONE BOOK HAD HELPED YOU GET OVER THE DEPRESSION, CONGRATULATIONS! YOU DIDN’T HAVE A DEPRESSION. But since people now mistake the usual wave of boredom or vitamin deficiency at the end of winter for depression, books can make life easier. But do they help eliminate severe depression, apathy, and so on?

For several years, I've kept saying that overreading books helped me when I was treated for my depression (not when you feel sad, but when sadness is the least of your problems because you have insomnia and headaches around the clock). Now, when I realized that I might have the same illness again, I saw a specialist and at the same time decided to analyze everything at first, because this time books won't help me, since I don't read them as I did previously.

So, what happened to me when reading good books? I have more than once felt something like an orgasm from those texts (not necessarily from reading sex scenes or belles-lettres) that turned me on with their ideas, language constructions, approaches to specific problems, and so on. For a long time, I've considered reading books another kind of satisfaction, which is both spiritual and physical. Ultimately, it is difficult to deny the hedonistic origin of "reading books." For how can one not become dependent on this warm and sweet, intoxicating inner sensation of admiration when an author criticizes society so softly and nobly, yet at the same time so precisely and masterfully, that you do not even need Vaseline? Doesn't reading books sometimes bring about as much pleasure as sexual intercourse, with the advantage that you can read a book far more hours in a row than have sex? Reading books even has an advantage over carnal pleasures because you'll never get pregnant from literature (do not confuse relationships with writers because you can from them), you'll never contract an illness, and, when asking, "How is it all going to end?", you'll eventually get a clear answer. The only downside is that books don't regulate your menstrual cycle, and you can't marry them.

But how is it connected with depression?

If you have ever been tested for depression, you were probably asked, “Has your libido changed?” When we have depression, we become indifferent to sex or sexually hyperactive. A weak libido accompanied my previous depression, and since the desire for gratification didn’t disappear, books became a substitute for sex and helped my body produce the necessary “hormones of happiness.” And this is not only about the arousal while reading a text because it is a little happiness for me, among other things: to finish a book, write down its author and title under the appropriate date in my reader's diary, count the number of pages to the end; to feel the inflow of new knowledge into your brain; more tremendous respect for yourself; the opportunity to later discuss the book with someone and once again let the plot and the genius of the author pass through yourself, etc., then look at it and feel it as a part of me. I feel incredibly fortunate when I use a particular book I read previously in my work (it even brings me to tears sometimes) or in the most trivial debate because everyone has the right to their pleasures. 

Reading a book is accompanied by so many positive feelings that it is difficult to overestimate their importance for my mental well-being. Having remembered all my literary benders and droughts, I see a clear correlation with how much sex I had during those periods (meaning more romantic relationships, for a one-night sexual act is a bit more problematic to organize). The less sex – the more books, the more sex – the fewer books. This is where people with a love for computers, marijuana, or other hobbies can choose their own options.

And now that my sex life is somewhat stable and sexual gratification is sufficient, I justifiably don't want to read books, especially fiction, which is always all about love, because I get the necessary dose of happiness another way. After that, one can reproach me for saying that a plot is not the main thing in a book, but I will answer that it's rare any book can please you with its original style or the way the text is constructed and rare that any book can generally surprise you at all. Here, I want to tell all preachers of the New Yorker's bibliotherapy that my brain has ceased to perceive all those novels about suffering, epic, unhappy relationships, and glorious tragic love stories. Now, I don't even understand how, when you want to die of loneliness and inner emptiness, you can read about how others live the life you'll never have or die of loneliness and injustice just like you. Instead, I want to talk about how fiction is trying so hard to persuade that love rhymes only with suffering, challenges, and competition instead of learning not to waste one's life for what is now called "toxic relationships," which the world literary canon is crawling with nowadays. I sometimes want to go on the booze for the rest of my life from reading social dramas. If there were still hope that maybe somewhere in a Godforsaken place, people could still live carelessly, reading something like To Kill A Mockingbird or The Grapes of Wrath, your rose-colored glasses simply break in front of your eyes, injuring retina and eyelids so that you want to remain blind until death.

If I didn’t read or pick up belles-lettres at all because I "simply didn’t want “ perhaps my psychologist's points about "barriers and self-punishment" in my head that caused a certain reading crisis would be valid. But over the last ten months, I've read 30 books, most of which were non-fiction and over 300 pages long, and I won't hide that Christopher Turner's Adventures in the Orgasmatron has given me so much pleasure as no fiction has long brought. So only now, while writing these lines, am I surprised to realize that I have no problem reading. My problem is with the cult of reading as many books as possible (if you are a book lover, you must know what I mean) and the cult of suffering in fiction. The surrounding world reminds me more and more of hell every day, and it's shitty without any literature. So if I wanted more pain, I might look for a real one in reportages. Why read fictional sad stories while there are the Gaza Strip, ISIS, Russia, and the war in eastern Ukraine? Is reading about a literal reality more reasonable than looking for the same suffering in fictional worlds? As Remarque once wrote, "One can speak about happiness for only five minutes, and no longer. There’s nothing to say about it, except that you are happy. But one can spend whole days and nights talking about unhappiness." So I don't know who would dare to argue that most fiction created during human existence is filled with primarily unrealistic suffering and that every novel is 10% happiness for the exposition, 40% suffering and agony for rising action, 20% severe pain for the climax, and 10% of the happiness for the resolution or, vice versa, 10% of the happiness for the climax and 20% of the remaining pain for the resolution.

Coming back to depression and books that help, I'm not going to refute that literature has a greater ability to distract us from reality than cinema or music do. And sometimes escaping from ordinary everyday life is so good. Also, from my own experience, I'm convinced that nothing helped more to relieve stress than reading a book – it helped me a lot when I was working on television during the Ukrainian presidential election. My nervous system was balancing itself between life and death. Reading books is a very good and proven airbag. Still, you should be careful with it because if you expect that they'll save you from some psychological problems, you only delay the onset of a particular point of "no return" when everything hidden still comes to the surface – and it always comes out – leading you to a nervous breakdown, hysteria, bender, or suicide attempt. 

I remember vividly my moment of no return before I had just gotten tired of reading and thought: What if, instead of "reading" the wounds, I would have immediately consulted a psychologist? What if instead of reading Beigbeder's The Romantic Egoist, I would right away have admitted that I was thinking of suicide more often than the majority of people? What if I had avoided hysterics because nothing would have distracted me from reality? I have learned to see positive things in everything; I still perceive my period of deep depression, or rather the beginning of my treatment for it, as the most potent time in my life, a second birth. Later, I lost any doubt that books were my best helper and friend, but now I'm sitting and thinking if that was the case. Undoubtedly, Freud, Jung, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer helped me, and I still consider reading Freud as some compulsory self-therapy and return to him at least once a year. But what did other books give me? 

As I return to my room, I remember a window that overlooked my neighbor's garden and allowed me to watch the life cycle of his apple tree; I remember that the bed was always positioned so that you could look at the same star before falling asleep; I remember there were quite a few books there at the time because they were beginning their expansion of my living space; I remember my insomnia, a 24/7 headache that wouldn’t even let me cry; I remember the pain in my back and neck, I remember feeling uninvolved in this world, and the wild pain that was rupturing my chest. And here I am lying in this always dark, cold room, with the window facing north, dad is watching TV loudly in the living room, my sister is not around, I'm reading Kafka, his letters to his father; I feel an affinity, I feel there is someone just like me. I wrote a lot during that period; I wrote about all the pain, the desire to die, and how much I wanted to sleep, and I thought that without this state, I would stop writing entirely. And there's Kafka, so depressed and appealing with his mental problems. Wasn't it what motivated him to write? Didn't it inspire him (God, I still believe in inspiration!)? I must be the same; I can't let go of this now; it must hurt me; I have to suffer from insomnia; I have to be a stranger to everyone, but let it be my secret, my highlight. Nice help, isn't it? Did Kafka motivate me to fight depression? He was not the only one for me. Of course, I don't regret reading all those books, but sometimes I wonder if constant rereading helps relieve the pain in its various manifestations. Does it really improve our empathy and understanding of others? Or do we begin to behave better when we understand others? Does literature make us better people? Hitler also read a lot and was engaged in bibliotherapy while being imprisoned. He then wrote out all his pain on the pages of a book, which later became a bestseller. Goebbels even studied literature and wrote a dissertation on dramatic art. They both must have understood the human psyche very well, but the New Yorker is unlikely to promote such consequences of reading books.


3.

Books are an extension of ourselves; they can help, but only a stack of recommended literature read mostly by psychology students can mentally heal you. Sublimation is not therapy, even though it is nice to dream as if books are miraculous icons. But this will not be the case; no book, even the most popular self-help books, will finally resolve political and social problems because literature won't save the world. It will only describe its death and explain the "black swans" after the event. And we should not expect more from it.

We have created an illusion of that beautiful, second-hand bookshop world which looks pretty much like this: a grand old bookstore, endless lines of shelves with a great variety of books (but only brilliant ones),  an old or young man/woman,/girl/boy with a mysterious story sitting at the counter, two lovers (or soon-to-be falling in love) are reading Marquez, Llosa, or Kundera and drinking hot delicious coffee, smacking lips somewhere on the windowsill. It's the middle of autumn, the trees are golden-brown, and there are no problems. The owner of this shop has by no means zero unpaid credits, and this pair of sweethearts will soon split up so that you can again read another tragic love story. But that book's reality is entirely different, full of problems with quality, practicality, senses, and so on. So again, I repeat myself: If you really love books, love them the way they are, don't create an aura of wonder or mythical romance around them. They exist to make us wiser, not blinder. Next time you ascribe some superpowers to books and promote the fictional second-hand bookshop world, ask yourself: How is your sex life?