Unparalleled Sorrow: Finding my way back from depression by Barry Dickins
Prahran, Vic.: Hardie Grant Books, 2009 ISBN 9781740668033
Barry Dickins has been a mainstay of the Melbourne literary scene for decades. Perhaps best known as a playwright, Dickins has turned his writing skills to all genres and forms, and is also a prolific artist. I have to confess to not having read much of his published material, but have enjoyed his newspaper columns, and the plays of his that I have seen at La Mamma Theatre (many years ago now).
Unparalleled Sorrow begins with Barry in a psychiatric clinic, undergoing a course of ECT to try and combat the depression which has overtaken him. The depression has been caused by the breakdown of his relationship with his wife, and her telling him she doesn't love him anymore. Barry stayed in the clinic for six months, doing nothing, needing prompting to wash, eating the gluggy food and taking medication. He lost himself in there, unable to sleep, unable to think, unable to write or paint. Eventually, encouraged by his father, he leaves the clinic.
The second section of the book looks back at his parents, and his early life in Reservoir and Melbourne generally. Dickins digs through the holes in his memory that the ECT has drilled, to recall that his mother succumbed to depression in her own way, zoning out in a fug of prescription medication, while his father was truly the heroic figure in Barry's life, working at his printing machines every day to keep hearth and home together.
When Dickins left home to work, he fell in with a commune in Melbourne, and was traumatized by a murder that was committed there. This led to his first contact with mental health institutions, after a breakdown he had in Tasmania because he couldn't cope with what had happened.
The final section brings us back to the present (2008), when Barry is living alone, and sharing custody of his only child, son Louis. Dickins spends much of this section writing about his son, and the joy he gets from being with him, but there are hints of depression still lurking about, in his drinking and smoking, and lack of the ability to find joy within himself.
Unparalleled Sorrow is a difficult book to read - not because of the writing, which is good, but because Dickins goes to the heart of depression. The reader feels the sense of helplessness, the sense of not knowing how Dickins had got to the place he had, how he understands the breakdown of his marriage has a lot to do with him, but can't follow through to get to the root of his troubles. He clings to his son like clinging to a life-line, but at the same time is aware that he can't place all his burdens onto a young boy, and this adds to the confusion in his mind. It's a powerfully sad book in many ways.
While by the end of the book Dickins is certainly in a better place than at the beginning, it's clear that depression is always lurking for him, and it is work to keep staving it off. Keeping a positive mindset throughout life is difficult - I can't remember the statistic, but lots of us will have a mental health battle at some stage during our lives. Barry's was a serious bout, and he has given us an insiders view of how depression takes your life, turns it upside down and empties your pockets of joy.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
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