My Life with Depression and PTSD

I changed this page on the site so I could have a specific place to tell my story, not my stories (as in the fictions, the fantasy and the blogs) but my story. In some of these there will be a creative or magical bend but they are still true. I hope someone who reads this can find something useful from it, take something that helps them, whatever that is. Because I believe that if I tell it, then I can take back some of it, at least the parts that have been ruling over me my whole life. Telling my story is an act of defiance to the past. Trigger warning, content on this page may be triggering to some readers as certain stories may mention child abuse, depression, suicide, and substance abuse.

If you need help, please click on this link to find help 24/7: https://www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org/

The Forgetting & The Ferryman:

A Tall Tale of the Impossible Task My Father Faced as a Young Man

My father was a silver-tongued prince who could charm a missionary out of his mission. As I understand it, he went to the jungle war, giving up a golf scholarship, he did not have to go, but he did. Like so many young men, he lost his innocence there. He lost his dear friend to the jungle one night. Nothing of my father’s friend, not his plane, or his person, was ever found. It was as if the jungle opened its enormous mouth and swallowed him whole.

His heart was broken open, heavy with grief, with an impossible burden–to bring the news to his friend’s wife and family. My father stole into the underworld then, to find his friend, and it was there he met the Boatman.

“Give me a coin to cross the Styx,” said Charon.

His skin was grayed leather tautly stretched over his skull. His beard of white grew in pieces from his bony chin. His eyes were hollow sockets where only the bravest souls would stare. He leaned on his pole and reached out a skeletal hand for payment.

“I don’t have one,” the silver-tongued prince said. “I’m not dead.”

“Then go back,” Charon said. “Return when it is your time. Only the dead may cross.”

“I believe my good friend came here,” my father said. “We never found his body, so no one could place a coin in his mouth. He would have nothing to pay you.”

“Then he may not cross.”

“Yes, well. He was the father of nine children. I must face them, along with his mourning wife. If I could just find him and take whatever message, he has for them back to her.”

“If what you say is true,” Charon said, leaning on his oar. “Then he may not be dead. You have wasted yourself coming here.”

"We lost contact with him, his plane, nothing. We are in a terrible war,”

“All war is terrible.”

“Yes, well,” my father said. ““I’ll make a bargain with you, Ferryman,” my father had a hawkish nose and cunning eyes. Lean of years, he had the confidence only youth can bring.

“No,” Charon said flatly. “This is not how things are done. You must go now.”

“You must be weary,” my father said. “Standing all these years, your back must ache from pushing this ancient boat weighed down by the dead to the other side of the Styx. I’ll wager you’ve even looked the other way sometimes and taken people across who have no coin to give. Putting coins on the dead went out of fashion in the last millennium.”

Charon nodded. “It is true,” he said. “The dead do not pay anymore.”

“You must be tired of taking them, ungrateful as they are.”

“It’s just not worth the hassle anymore,” said Charon. The boatman looked out on the river, as if contemplating something. He sighed. “It has been a long time since I sat down.” 

 “Give me one day to look for him and then return to the living with his message. I can’t face his family without it.“

“And?” Charon stared at my father with lifeless sockets under his hood.

“And,” my father swallowed hard. “When I die, I will take your place rowing the dead across the river. You can retire, you can finally sit down, sip pina coladas on the beach, or whatever you want to do.”

The Ferryman scratched the white beard that grew gruesomely from his bony chin. My father felt heavier and heavier the longer he stayed and hoped to be gone soon.

“You have one day,” Charon said. The ferryman reached into his deathly black robes and pulled out a large, empty bottle with a cork. “And, fill this with water from the river Lethe. Do not return to me without it.”

The silver-tongued prince agreed and made a deal with the boatman. He took the bottle from Charon. 

“Follow the riverbank,” Charon said, “but do not go in the water. And whatever you do, don’t let Cerberus see you.”

My father stepped off the boat and onto the other side of the Styx. Not wanting to tempt fate more, he did exactly as he was told. He spent only one day looking for his friend, but he could not find him. Try as he might, no one would speak to him, and no one looked like the man he sought. The dead were mournfully silent, keeping to themselves and offering him no information. He could not find his friend. He started to wonder if perhaps his friend were still alive, maybe captured by the enemy, and held prisoner.

He heard the great hound, Cerberus but was able to hide from the slumbering three headed dog and knelt at the river Lethe. He gingerly filled the bottle with the dark, murky water and set out to return to Charon to fulfill his part of the bargain. He returned after a long day of looking, and having filled the bottle with the river Lethe, he handed it to Charon. The boatman did not take the bottle but looked at my father for a long moment, as if he was measuring his weight.

“Keep it,” Charon said.

“But you said–” 

“Your friend will never be found. You will need it.”

My father looked at the bottle. The river water was dark amber. He stared at the liquid for what felt like a long time and when he looked up again, the ferryman was not there. All of Hades and the underworld were gone. He was back in Vietnam, in the barracks staring at the duty board with his friend’s name, and next to it in big red letters: “M.I.A.”

What an impossible moment to heap on his shoulders. Regardless of his paternal shortcomings, I can never fathom that moment–knowing he would have to face his friend’s wife and family, look in their eyes. He would tell them, in the family room of their home. He said, "It was the hardest thing I've ever done."  How could I judge that? My father was human.

In the barracks, dazed with fog, he realized he still had a bottle in his hands. He peered into the amber liquid and saw there the river and the boatman. When he blinked, the thought and memory were gone and the bottle in his hand was labeled, “Kentucky Bourbon.” The silver-tongued prince’s mouth tasted of lead. He put the river Lethe to his lips and drank from that bottle for years.

The Ferryman

My father, the silver-tongued prince is dead. He kept his word to Charon, if not to me. Somewhere, on a sunny beach Charon is getting some overdue sun and sipping Pina Coladas. Jimmy Buffet plays in the background. The ferryman enjoys his retirement and chuckles from time to time as Cerberus digs holes in the sand only to see the tide fill them again, and again. 

Staying Alive ________________________ by Bert Rock (2022)

Depression is a sinkhole, a toothache in my heart, it is an escalator that only goes down. It does not matter how well life is going, or how many wonderful and loving friends you have. It does not care, it will make you feel alone in a crowded room, alone next to someone you love. It’s a cage of iron that keeps love and light out. Depression can make darkness out of light. Sometimes it feels like there’s a creature somewhere in my body, gnawing at my gut and filling me with holes. I feel it in my core. I double up, lie in the fetal position because it feels like I am eroding from the inside. Suicide is not a goal. It is a door. One nobody wants to walk through. But sometimes, even the thought of it can be a release. That’s how twisted and fucked up depression is, that it makes the thought of ending one’s life seem like a salve for a wound you cannot bandage. Stay alive. I don’t want to die. I want to live. I want to love those I love. I want to love someone new and feel soft hair on my cheek. I want to be there when the people I love grow, succeed, fail, and fall. I want to be there for everything because I love them so much. Why do I have such a hard time being there for myself? Because somewhere deep inside there is still an 8-year-old boy cutting himself with a pair of orange handled scissors. There’s a 16-year-old who sits and watches the same movie again and again while smoking cigarettes for an entire summer. A 12-year-old stares through walls, a 6-year-old sees himself from the ceiling, a 37-year-old carries a razor blade in his wallet, and none of them can see life lasting one more year. None of them could have ever imagined the 50-year-old writing this.  

The Family Hammer_______________________by Bert Rock

In the garage of my sixth childhood home, there was the green tackle box Grandpa Johnny gave me before he died. Countless times I opened it, looking through the little compartments, using my small fingers to fish for a lure, a weight, or one more memory of him.

There was the compound bow my father never used, a barbell thick with dust, and his unopened toolbox. Mother’s station wagon sagged, homely and tired. My father’s Porsche, with its perpetual shine, hid a bottle of bourbon under the hood. 

A naked Barbie doll lay motionless. In a corner, my brother’s GI Joe was trapped in cobwebs, resigned to his fate. The axe and the orange lawnmower had handles worn smooth by my eight-year-old hands. Next to them, the empty space where my stolen bike should have been.

In my hand, there was a blue-handled hammer. I used it to strike the walls late at night when the cars were gone, as if I could bring the whole house down on us all.

The Deserted______________________________________by Bert Rock (2002)

A sonnet for my brother

I remember how my brother’s shadow 
was almost reaching for mine, when I left
him, too cold to make angels in the snow
or understand how to deal with a death
that he knew I looked for, in a Desert 
Storm far from our mother. “Aaron is so 
very proud of you,” she said “he still hurts
from the way your father was.” I know
was all that I could say then. My brother 
and I:  unspent rounds of ammunition 
our father brought back, to fire at mother’s   
heart. She carried us; wounds in progression
but never scarred. Someday, I should go home 
find the angel I left in the snow, alone.  
   

Mothers & Gods____________________________________by Bert Rock (2003)

Being a mother must be what God feels like. Holding her belly so round and full of a growing new world. My sister is a mother now, she created a son and gave him a name. I imagine, one day, he will look in her eyes, green like spring. Perhaps he’ll wonder what gods created her, and where did they go? She was the last one they created, before the world of our family ended.