Sometimes let the Imaginary Friends Walk Away.

I don't remember when I first encountered depression. It might have been in high school when I struggled to deal with hormones and emotions and being a teenager in what I thought was love. It probably should have been when my marriage fell apart and the break that can never truly be repaired happened in my immediate, extended family and friends. Depression was already a mainstay by that point in some ways and my ego and self righteous self interest was more powerful than gravity at that point anyway.

I do know when that depression finally morphed into something darker that led me to begin to discuss the idea of finding a way out with my mental triumvirate. Yes, I like to think of my internal self thought as a trilogy of annoying white males. When I first came up with the idea, I was very pleased with myself. I imagine that my constant inner mental conversation takes place mainly by three parts of my heritage. All three images are vastly stereotypical and self serving AND not nearly as clever as I once presumed them to be.

I often think, imagine or for lack of a better description - converse and argue with three men in my heads. An aggressive, territorial, quick to assume attacks and impulsive German. A jovial, quick with a joke and to lit up your smoke but prone to loud bar arguments Irishman and a concerned, calculated and at sometimes overpowered - but ultimately the one in charge - Jew.

That is some racist shit right there.

Stereotypes born of movies, television and books. Caricatures more than nationalities or personalities. I would imagine the arguments, give horrible accents to them all. Always mentally giving it more a 12 Angry Men discussing important legal matters feel. When it was simply a child creating cartoon placeholders for the emotions and feelings that he couldn't understand.

In recent years, the fun of the masquerade has faded and the personas have fallen apart. When depression turned into thoughts of suicide, it wasn't a discussion between three voices. It felt more like a chorus of impenetrable tones from soprano to bass chanting in discord toward a needed resolution.

Suicide isn't a resolution. And I was lucky to understand that eventually the first time, with the help of a car load of jackasses (see blog entry from years ago) and every time since with the help of logic, patience and at times, those personas again.

Where it once felt like a play of intellect and passion on par with Miller, Mamet or Beckett, it is now more often than not the meeting of three weary, anguished actors underwhelmed with their roles. The lines feel stale. The pacing and stage direction is too expected and familiar. There isn't even the occasional toaster ejecting toast to provide levity. It's simply worn out, out of phase and ultimately sad.

Now and then one actor will decide that tonight is the night that he will be seen. That this is the chance his monologue and sonnets will shine. One part of the triad will explode and rush to the edge of the proscenium, dangerously teetering on the edge of the orchestra pit, at times even moving out of the spotlight. The passion is there. The desire to find the climax, to twist the metaphorical knife is profound.

Yet the moment passes. Often from exhausting or ultimate lack of conviction from the impulse that spurned the caricature itself.

And so the persona, the German, Irishman or Jew slumps back against the walls of the mind. An actor disgusted with the lack of script, the repetition of a flawed plot and the plot like a cage that is their limited character definition.

I know that those three mental beings are not real and I know that they were created as flawed, stereotypical and implements of emotion. Yet when each took his turn on the stage, in the spot light of my mind tonight, I enjoyed their commitment and passion to the character they were given. And I understood their ultimate failure and frustration as not their own but born of the limited material they were provided.

As they each sat, breathless and unfulfilled, I finally saw them as the actors they were. I saw the limits of the roles I gave them to play. Perhaps it is time to let the stereotyped personas and emotional crutches of the past go. I think my mental avatars are getting too old for this shit.