"I should have been considered a completely happy man"

When my husband got home for work yesterday and asked how I was, I reported that I was having a "very depressed" day. He asked if it was anything going on, and I reported no, it was all internal. He has learned to accept that. Sometimes something sad has occurred, but, much more often, my mood is due to chemistry rather than catastrophe.

I was moved, therefore, by this passage from Leo Tolstoy which is found on page 45 of Touched with Fire by Kay Redfield Jamison (Free Press Paperbacks 1993). His life, like mine, was filled with the elements which should bring happiness. But his mind, like mine, was darkened.

"The thought of suicide came to me as naturally then as the thought of improving life had come to me before. This thought was such a temptation that I had to use cunning against myself in order not to go through with it too hastily. I did not want to be in a hurry only because I wanted to use all my strength to untangle my thoughts. If I could not get them untangled, I told myself, I could always go ahead with it. And there I was, a fortunate man, carrying a rope from my room, where I was alone every night as I undressed, so that I would not hang myself from the beam between the closets. And I quit going hunting with a gun, so that I would not be too easily tempted to rid myself of life. I myself did not know what I wanted. I was afraid of life, I struggled to get rid of it, and yet I hoped for something from it.

"And this was happening to me at a time when, from all indications, I should have been considered a completely happy man; this was when I was not yet fifty years old. I had a good, loving, and beloved wife, fine children, and a large estate that was growing and expanding without any effort on my part. More than ever before I was respected by friends and acquaintances, praised by strangers, and I could claim a certain renown without really deluding myself."



I am not presently in the depths which Count Tolstoy describes, but I understand that place which he visited. That landscape is familiar to me now.




Thank you to wahooart.com for the painting.