The Scent of White Clover
“White clover (trifolium repens) is a fickle plant, coming and going with the varying seasons. It often burns out in hot weather. An old hard road, once abandoned, is likely to send up white clover in advance of the grasses.” W.A. Beal, 1887
The Death of a Friend
Last year, just before her birthday, one of my oldest and closest friends killed herself. It was a gruesome end to an incredibly creative yet troubled life, and it left me with a deep gash in my soul. The news did not shock me. She had given us all warnings over the years. But I was shaken by an inescapable truth: it could have been me.
Within the silky lacework of our deep friendship were threads of loneliness, inadequacy, mania, intense creativity, and sometimes deep depression. The patterns changed with the years. She would become manic while I would withdraw. She would self-medicate while I would just sleep. She would rant about it while I would remain silent. Our responses to our unhappiness and depression were different, and there were times when I was running manic right alongside her. But for both of us, there was the constant allure of that one shiny thread, the one that promised an end to our inescapable pain. Suicide.
We never made a pact, although we did make dark jokes about it in the years preceding her suicide. There were times when our conversations would sprint along that dangerous course, all the way to the edge before we pulled back with a laugh and a witticism. And then we would vow to consult the other if we ever lingered too long at that dangerous edge. We would make light of it, joking about growing old and cranky together, living in a creaky Victorian and wearing poorly applied pink and orange make up. We imagined a cupboard full of coffee cups with perennial lip prints and a percolator of coffee at the ready.
At the beginning of the pandemic, as the country convulsed with conspiracy theories and fantastical lies, she became increasingly distraught about the conflicting narratives that pelted us 24/7. She wrote, “The worst thing … [sic] the thing that has flattened me …[sic] is when anyone degrades my personal experience during this motherfucking crisis…[sic]. Never. NEVER invalidate ANYONE. And stop with the ALL of the judging … of ANYONE. It’s CRUEL.”
Later that same day, after she posted that her dog was dying and that there was nothing she could do about it, I responded and tried to call her. But by then she had already stared too long into that abyss we both knew so well. She didn’t call me first. She just made her choice and ended it all.
I spent the next few days plumbing the depths of sadness, mine and hers, both understanding and not understanding her final act. I had to accept that there was nothing I could have done, could now do. It was up to me to learn from all that had happened over the years. And to be more honest about it.
No matter what anyone says, there is a stigma borne by all who acknowledge any kind of mental health problems, a stigma that makes it very difficult not only to seek help but also to talk about what we are going through. Most of us ingest rather than share our dark thoughts of the abyss. For decades I remained silent and just ate that dreadful candy. She did not. She did try to seek help. She was hospitalized at least half a dozen times. And over the years, the changing diagnoses and prescription medications took their toll on her body and on her ability to bounce back. Meanwhile, I carried on as if life was a beautiful joyride.
Like many sufferers, I was an excellent actor and a high achiever and was capable of entertaining rooms full of people while being miserable inside. But I knew that something was wrong because as soon as the laughter died down, I retreated into the misery place. Even when I was with close family and friends, aching loneliness consumed me. I would watch them laughing and joking, building houses, getting married, having families, and I would wonder how they managed it. How did they work up the desire to carry on, to reproduce themselves? It was the last thing I wanted to do: to condemn an unsuspecting child to the misery I could not escape.
No one fully understands why some people experience depression and others don’t. Siblings raised in the same household can have vastly different mental health outcomes. And there are few answers for sufferers who seek help, as I learned. My experiences with mental health professionals were disappointing, or frightening. There was a need on the part of some practitioners to find blame among the people I loved most (my father, mother, brothers), which confused me and left me feeling hopeless. And hopelessness is the terrible twin in suicidal thoughts. By November of 2019, I was planning in secret the when, where, and how I would walk into that abyss. I did not expect her to beat me to it.
But she did. Exactly one month before her birthday. On a Wednesday night. After having posted those cryptic messages on social media. It was crushing. I felt even more hopeless. And she was gone. Forever.
The Death of My Depression
I grieved and grieved. But then, a few months later, in the height of the pandemic, with the whole of the world plunged into strange chaos and the American public being blanket-bombed with antipathetic bullying rhetoric and the “so what if you die” attitude of millions of Americans, something inside me changed.
It was sudden. I was sitting in the backyard, staring at the trees and leaves, marveling at the scent of blooming white clover as it wafted up the hillside and enveloped me. I took a deep breath. And then, all at once, the weight of depression seemed to lift off me. In an instant, it was gone. Just gone. A feeling of joy like none I had ever experienced took its place, pushing out the darkness and filling my entire being with light.
It was as if I had been colorblind my whole life and now could see for the first time every shade of blue and green that life offers the human eye. I wanted to run through town and tell everyone about my discovery. I had never felt such joy. Ever. It was not a manic episode: I know those well. It was a liberation that I didn’t know I needed. I had been held hostage all those years by my own mind — for whatever reason. Now, I was free.
The constant drone of melancholy that had so long run in the background of my life’s soundtrack was silenced. I was now tuned in to that long elusive frequency we call happiness. I began writing again. I was confident. Words flowed, rivers of things I had always wanted to say. I did the #10,000 words of summer and made connections with other writers. I found new ways to craft the thoughts I had so long gathered into sheaves. The darkness was gone. I saw light everywhere I looked. And I still do.
More than anything, I wanted to share all the good news with my dear friend. I wrote to her, knowing she would never read the words. I wrote them anyway. And more. And I kept at it. I found solace and joy in the writing.
The Death of a Friendship
I tried to share this newfound joy and creative breakthrough with a few people close to me. These were people in whom I had confided my history of depression. I was surprised by some of the reactions. It wasn’t as big a deal to some of them as it was to me. Fair enough. But one friend with whom I had become very close over the previous decade, let’s call her Melanie, was actually negative. She started calling me Polyanna and labelled the joy I emoted “toxic positivity.” When I told her that I was feeling really good about writing and that this newfound joy was fueling the process, she said something that was meant to pull at that shiny dangerous thread running through my fabric, a thread she knew was there because I had confided in her. Without a moment’s hesitation she said, “happy people don’t make good art.”
Happy people don’t make good art. Wow. That was a dismissive volley I did not expect. Not from Melanie, anyway. It saddened me that she was not happy for me, and in fact was annoyed and irritated by it. I tried to see her point of view, but I just could not understand why my newfound sense of joy bothered her so much.
Then I recalled a conversation that I had had with my now dead friend. She had often ranted about the all-too-common references to “tortured artists,” and how she despised the romanticized Hollywood versions of a “real artist” as a tormented, drug addicted, alcoholic wreck of a human lauded only after death. And what bothered her more was the romanticized versions of what happens to those who are relegated to mental wards.
“A real mental ward isn’t filled with People Magazine’s sexiest assholes,” she said once. And she was right. A mental ward is not filled with the well put together. It is a place of savage misery, with odors and faces that most people will never have to know exist. We had had several conversations about such things over the years. And she had always been upfront about how her mental health issues prevented her from doing the work that she really wanted to do. She resented people who liked her better “broken.” I finally understood what she meant.
That realization came with another. I had to accept the fact that my friendship with Melanie was now over. I no longer offered her the thing that she needed: a passive, always in the shadows companion who never challenged her. She wasn’t interested in what I now had to say. Worse, she didn’t believe that I was being honest about my depression. As much as it hurt and, in some ways, still does, I had to let the friendship die.
The death of a friendship can be devastating. But it can also be liberating. I had not realized how negative a voice Melanie had become over the years, nor the negative effect that it had on me — probably on her, as well. I do miss many things about that friendship. But I don’t miss how Melanie prefers the weak and unhappy me, the one who was always along for the ride, but never driving the car.
The Birth of Something Better
We both have moved on and in different creative directions and, I hope, we are both finding fulfillment in what we are doing. Her achievements I will continue to celebrate, as I have always done. I wish her the best.
More importantly, I now have hope, all kinds of hope. And one off those hopes is that all those who toy with the notion of suicide are able to find their way out of the darkness, and to trust in themselves to find a way into the light. But I have no recommendations to give. There is no universal advice for those who suffer from depression, and the medical establishment treats symptoms, not causes. It is a journey unique to each person. But there is truth in the idea that hope is always there, even if we can’t see it.
Not every moment of my life has been dark and sad. Sometimes, I look back on those moments when I did in fact feel happy, trying to find a common thread that might lead me to some breakthrough understanding of my own depression and how it descended upon me and then suddenly left. There really isn’t a thread — not that I can find, and not that the medical establishment can find.
Could it be that the scent of white clover was the cure I needed? Could it somehow have readjusted my brain chemistry? Welsh folklore says that white clover is a cure for insanity. Perhaps. And perhaps one day the mysteries of the mind will be revealed. It is a complicated mechanism. The brain responds to stimuli in ways that continue to befuddle us. Would that a “cure” be so simple as the scent of clover coasting on the breezes of summer.
Now, as I continue to celebrate my liberation from the decades of depression, I am finally engaging in and achieving all of those things I so longed to do. Yes, there are still struggles. Not every moment of every day is exhilarating and fabulous. I still have those down times where life’s challenges seem more than enough. But now, with the darkness gone, I can write thousands and thousands of words and dozens of stories and essays. There are few opportunities to share them, and the rejection letters keep coming in! But the ability to get the writing started and completed is precious. For me, this is the birth of something better. Better that I continue to celebrate this newfound freedom rather than to flirt with visions of death. Better because I shall persist. And I have seeded my lawn with white clover.