When I was at university, I learned to scuba dive.
If that idea conjures up gin-clear water and schools of fish darting through the brightly-coloured coral, then you’ve forgotten I live in England. And because of the time it takes to get trained, and the academic year, and so on, my first dive trip was to an inland dive site – a deep lake a long ways north. In March.
It snowed.
The water was bitingly cold, I was in a hired dive suit and very old, borrowed gloves – thin and full of holes. When I went into the water, my hands were so cold they ached. But after a little while, I adjusted, my hands stopped feeling cold, and we got on with things. And that was fine, until we got out of the water. My hands were so cold that I couldn’t squeeze the plastic pinch-clips on my equipment to remove it. It took all my strength to get them undone.
Figuring that this was not just uncomfortable but downright dangerous, I went to the site shop and made my first purchase of scuba gear: Some gloves. Which I wore on the next dive.
I did notice that the cold water wasn’t quite so painful to start with, but then a funny thing happened: I never got used to the cold. My hands were aching with cold from start to finish. I got out of the water convinced that I had wasted my money on a lousy pair of gloves – the crappy hole-ridden old gloves had been better than these shiny new ones!
And then I went to undo the plastic clips again, and they squeezed open without any trouble. And something went ‘Ping!’ in my head as it all suddenly came clear.
The original gloves had done such a lousy job that my hands hadn’t ‘gotten used’ to being cold – they’d just gone so numb that I didn’t feel it anymore. The new gloves were better, so my hands had felt cold the whole time because they WEREN’T numb. Hence why I had had no strength in them in the old gloves. The new gloves had kept my hands warm enough to feel how cold they were, giving me a false impression of how well they compared to the old ones.
Why is this relevant to today? Well, because every now and again in recent months, I’ve gone into a bit of a downer. And this has puzzled me, because I never used to get these periods where I felt sad and depressed at how my life was going; and yet on the face of it my life is better now than it used to be. Why am I occasionally unhappy now when things are pretty good, when I never was a few years ago when life was pretty crap?
And this is where my scuba experience comes in as a handy metaphor, because I realised that in the same way that I noticed the cold more when they were warmer; I’m noticing the down times specifically because I’m mostly pretty happy. They’ve become the noticeable episode rather than the numbing perma-state.
A few years ago, I basically didn’t like any aspect of my life. Didn’t like my job, didn’t like my relationship, etc. etc. Quitting my job to start out afresh training as a teacher was the snowflake the triggered an avalanche: I moved home, split up with my girlfriend, met somebody else, all was well.
Then I decided that teaching wasn’t for me either, and quit that. My girlfriend split up with me. Suddenly, I had lost every focus of my life and I was completely at a loss as to what to do next: As a result, the unhappiness with nearly all aspects of my life that I had been living with for a long time became so acute that I went into a massive bout of depression.
I was asked recently by somebody I met in that period if I remembered a conversation we’d had. I thought about it for a while, and then gave the honest answer of “No”. Thinking about it a little more, I realised that I actually barely remember anything of the entire period. There’s a huge mental fog with occasional isolated islands of unrelated memories.
I remember my trip through Europe quite well: I remember talking to a man in the campsite with him speaking in lousy english and me in lousy french because it was the only way we could communicate. I remember my first ride on the French train, being so baffled by their seat reservation system that I didn’t want to challenge the man in what seemed to be my seat, so I grabbed the conductor and asked him where I was meant to sit. And he didn’t challenge the guy in my seat either, but found me another seat. I remember the chocolates I found in one little shop in Belgium that were so good they almost count as addictive. I remember the crazy parisian taxi driver who was so determined to get me to my train on time that he was pulled over the the police and drove down a pedestrians-only street. I remember getting so blase about seat reservations by the end of the trip that it was 50/50 whether I’d be asking somebody to move by waving a ticket at him and using sign language, or whether I’d be the one getting a ticket waved at me for nicking somebody else’s seat. I remember the strange spanish lady I met in Venice who wanted to kiss me. I remember being told about the dirty secret behind one of Rome’s most famous fountains… There were a lot of interesting things on that trip that stand out from the haze. But the rest of the time..?
I have no idea how I wound up staying with Darkly when I came back to England. I can’t remember how Naughty and I went from being very close and trying to make it as “just friends” to being at war so badly that we had to stop talking. I don’t know why Lazy decided to come over and visit me, I barely remember her visit and I have no clue why she now hates me. I’ve no idea what’s happening with Lady, who I’ve known for nearly 15 years but haven’t heard from in a year… I genuinely have no idea how I wound up in my current situation. I know that events are made more or less memorable depending on your emotional state, and I remember just how bad a state I was in, so I assume that’s the reason: When you’re not just numb from the cold, but feeling like you’re almost dead of it, you’re not going to be committing much to memory.
But, as I was reminded recently by an online acquaintance, eventually something happened that made me determined to get out of the mental pit I was in; and being a stubborn man I dug in my heels and made it happen: Slowly I got out of the depression, I found a job I liked, sorted out a home I liked, and generally started replacing all the things that had made me unhappy with things that I enjoyed. I found some direction for my life. It was a long process and it took a lot of determination, and it still isn’t over, but it’s trundling along in the right direction.
So yes, it does sound a little odd to say that the reason I notice I feel sad more often now than I used to is that I’m happier than I used to be.. but it’s true nonetheless. And in a strange way, I count it as a good sign when I notice that I’m sad, because it’s become unusual enough to be noteworthy.
