THE LIMITS OF MY LANGUAGE by Eva Meijer — reviewed by Thomas

The Limits of My Language by Eva Meijer (translated from Dutch by Antoinette Fawcett)

He did not want to write any aphoristic gems about depression, and he did not want to read any, either. When he wrote, Depression sharpens the tools but makes them too heavy to use, he crossed this out immediately, it was simply not true, after all, depression blunts the tools and makes them too heavy to use, which is hardly an aphoristic gem. Nothing to be gained. As Eva Meijer points out in her excellent and well-written book The Limits of My Language, the sensitivities that may appear to be a side benefit of depression might in any case just as well be precursors of the depression that renders them useless, at least in those times when the depression is at its most obliterative and those sensitivities are impossible to recognise as any sort of benefit, no matter how kindly others might assure us that they are. Meijer’s book is not a self-help book, thank goodness, he thought, but a thoughtful account of the experience of depression, or rather the non-experience that so often constitutes depression, and of the philosophical and practical considerations entailed by that (non)experience. It is what Meijer terms “the expired present” that makes it impossible for the depressed person to see the point in anything, even, or most especially, their most basic everyday needs; if they do see value in anything, they cannot see any possible connection between this value and themselves. The depression prevents the depressed person from achieving the benefits of agency and identity that commonly result from (or produce) a person’s experience of time (agency being a connection with a future (through intention); identity being a connection with the past (through memory)). “When you are depressed, all the time is between-time or anti-time, just as the depressed person is a between-person, not dead but certainly not alive (if only you were actually dead or alive).” The present is erased, he thought, or I am erased in that present, which is the same thing, at least for me. This depression, a state with no feelings, with no capacities, is indistinguishable from brain damage, he thought, that is, unless I do have actual brain damage, which sometimes I wonder; this self-loss, this moment-by-moment existence that resembles an erasure, this inability to actually achieve anything that I would recognise as thought or action, or, at best, the achievement of what seems to me a mere simulacrum of thought, a mere simulacrum of action, the best I can achieve, that I have learned to achieve, on a good day, simulacra that may carry me through that day, though their connection to me is less than tentative, as far as I can see, but not nothing. “Depression isn’t always something that you can solve with your head,” writes Meijer, who has herself slowly learned, over the years, her own habits and techniques that help to pull her though depressive periods, or to avoid some of their worst effects (for instance, by putting “into brackets” what cannot be removed (a useful editing technique)). “Time persists in moving forward and moving you too,” she writes. Although thinking may have its uses, even as far as depression is concerned, the withstanding of depression, if it is to be withstood, seems to come from some other something in oneself, perhaps, he thought, something to do with the physical aspects of oneself, whatever they are, or the physical aspects of the world around, so to call it, or of some relationship between the two, physical aspects being more conducive to the physics of momentum, he supposed, which can carry us though. Even though I hardly believe in momentum, at least as far as I am concerned, here I am, carried forward, there is at least some evidence that I have been susceptible to being carried forward, despite it all, for what it’s worth, at least so far. What is it that enables or compels us to continue, he wondered. Whatever depression makes most difficult could be the best tool to use against it, but depression makes that tool blunt and makes it too heavy to use. All we can hope to do, he thought, and this is not nothing, is learn to withstand it all, perhaps, anchored maybe by whatever is too heavy to be used, and allow time to pass. This is not nothing, at all.