Sadness Strikes Me from Time to Time, but I Am Already Much Better

Yesterday, after I published the article "I Have Mild Depression; I Need to Adjust My Way of Living," I received greetings from many friends, and I was truly moved. But I am not in a state to be disturbed right now, so I will not respond at length.

Many friends worry about my state and have offered advice, for which I am very grateful. Let me say a little more about how I am now. In fact, through self-medication and conditioning, my sleep and diet have already returned to normal. Whenever I have time I go to the vegetable garden and work for a while, working up a sweat. I ride my bike on the road, fast and full of energy; my physical symptoms have in fact completely disappeared.

The only state left to me I would describe with an old poetic line: "In sorrow at the times, flowers shed tears; grieving at parting, birds startle the heart." But I want to face everything with an open rather than a closed heart, because I must escape from this state. I may not want company for the moment, but you can follow the flow of my emotions by reading what I write.

Every day, sadness attacks me at unpredictable times and for unpredictable numbers of times, without warning, and often makes me cry. When sadness strikes, I at once lose my optimistic view of the whole world. I used to view the great majority of things optimistically; I was full of love for the people around me, and always expressed my tender love for my partner with every possible word and deed.

These things filled me with strength: I was not only energetic and vital but also positive. But when sadness strikes, my world is drizzly. At such moments I fall into the mood described in Qin Guan's line: "Flying petals, light as a dream; endless fine rain, fine as sorrow," and find it hard to pull myself out. In the past a flower by the roadside or a pretty fallen leaf could make me happy, but now anything can trigger my grief.

I am a changed person from before the pandemic outbreak at the end of the year. During the outbreak I worked until I spat blood; at my busiest, more than a thousand people came to me for help each day. For a medical worker, facing a hundred supplicants a day is enough to collapse with exhaustion. Ten times that volume can truly destroy a person's sense of well-being. At the time I could feel panic, pessimism and despair closing in around me; I fought hard against this broad social mood and helped others ease their physical and spiritual pain.

During that period, sleep was a luxury to me; getting one or two hours a day was good. I was in a state of reckless self-abandon; after I myself was infected, I rested only a few hours before getting up to care for my family and my patients, and my cough plagued me long afterward. I forgot all the important days of life; in my heart there was only that epidemic that swept over everyone.

In February I had not yet recovered when my relative dragged me into another desperate ordeal. I had to learn about criminal cases I had never known before; his charge was "picking quarrels and provoking trouble." But in fact, both a Beijing police officer and the brother of a northeastern police officer later told me that I then lacked social experience; had I had enough, the one arrested and imprisoned would not have been my relative but the local police who had come to Beijing to entrap him. The brother of that northeastern officer also told me his younger brother was a patrolman; when his brother's colleagues came to Beijing to intercept petitioners (legitimate petitioning is a civic right protected by the constitution), the petitioners called the Beijing police, and his brother's colleagues were themselves thrown in jail.

The rescue was hard, because confronting public power is difficult; the abusing officers themselves were on edge, fearing I would take measures against them, scheming against my family, threatening me, telling me that if I continued to interfere he would come arrest me and count me as an accomplice. Of course I was not afraid of him, but I worried it would affect my son's college entrance exam. After my relative entered the lockup, he kept calling, demanding that the family rescue him. Yet he was locked up for a full two months before being released, and only on bail after pleading guilty and accepting punishment; he remains on bail to this day.

Outside of my heavy daily work, I worried myself to pieces over this matter. It also robbed our whole family of the sense of security we had known. My son's immediate reaction was that he no longer wanted to study in China. He ran a high fever for a week—the first time in his life he had a fever so long—and his exams afterward got worse and worse, with no normal performance at all.

My focus shifted to building my child's psychological resilience and finding a suitable school abroad; at first I thought of schools in Hong Kong, and later of other countries. This too was enormously draining. Family and intimate relationships also flashed red lights more than once at this time, and I had to prepare for my own college entrance exam; all of this left me running ragged.

Time has passed; looking back over this past half year, I only now realize how much I bore. Then came the summer, when a series of family and emotional conflicts erupted. Hardly a single person thought that I should simply rest for a while. My life was continuously stuffed with noise, until one day I noticed I had not had a good, hearty laugh like in the old days for a long time; when I laughed, a faint sadness always lingered at the corner of my mouth. I then knew I was like a spring pulled too far, unable to return to its original state.

Later still, I felt myself go numb. I ached badly, yet did not know why, nor where the outlet for these bad emotions lay; I had a feeling of being "frozen." I suddenly woke up: this "frozen" feeling is a clinical feature of depression. I began looking for scales and took the test; my score was 25 (12-25 is mild depression; above 25 is moderate or severe).

On August 11, I keenly noticed on the webcam that my father was acting strangely; within five minutes I had bought a ticket home. I had to go back and see him; after I got there, the check showed he had indeed suffered a cerebral infarction. On August 12, I wept aloud at my mother's grave; that long cry gave my emotions an outlet, and they poured out in a raging torrent. By the bond of blood, my father was the first to sense that I was unhappy; that morning, on the way to the Medicine-King Temple, he began earnestly to counsel me. The most important point he made was that I should take care of myself and not live too hard.

At my mother's grave I felt her love for me; walking with my father at the Medicine-King Temple, I felt his love and understanding. My emotions began, little by little, to rise from the bottom. I knew I must struggle hard to drive away the sadness. I have treated depressed patients and know how easily they shut themselves in; once shut in, recovery becomes extraordinarily difficult. I must cut an opening in myself; I must let my inner self show and be seen. People must know where my boundaries lie; I must feel in control of my own life. If I do not, sadness will swallow me.

There is so much I should thank myself for. I have been diligent all my life, reading every day and encountering all kinds of patients, so it is extremely easy for me to spot the signals of my own illness; I also know better than most doctors how to save myself. I write almost every day; though I am clumsy with words, once I take up the pen I can flowingly express everything in my inner world.

For years I have also kept up the good habit of exercise (or physical labor); the power of this habit is such that even sunk in sadness I can still keep running at high efficiency rather than sliding rapidly downward. Then there are the fine genes my mother gave me, which give me a natural resistance to depression; I firmly refuse to let it eat at me for long. Once I spot it, I will crush it.

So, as expected, when I tested again my depression score quickly plunged to 13 (of course this number may fluctuate in the near future), already close to recovery. It is only that for now I cannot shake off sadness's occasional raids; seeing each patient's hardship, I easily grow sad to the point of near-sobbing for them.

On my way back from my hometown, I met four children with neuroblastoma; the plight of those dear little angels plunged me at once into sadness, unable to pull out. After the consultation I hurried to Zhengzhou East high-speed rail station and let my tears out.

This agitated emotional state is clearly still abnormal, especially for someone in my line of work; if I were this easily moved, I would be hurting myself every day. After taking Xiaoyao Wan and Erzhi Wan, my emotions stabilized considerably; outside stimuli no longer show on my face. Though waves still surge within, it is much better; I can control my emotions and keep them from running wild everywhere.

I know the outbreak of depressive mood has both external and internal causes. Without an internal cause, external pressure alone is not enough to sink a person into depression. So in this period I entered an unprecedented depth of reflection, exploring the wounds in the depths of my soul. If there were no wounds deep in the soul, someone like me, who had abundant motherly love in childhood, would not have collapsed.

One day, I suddenly saw that weeping child I had been. In that moment I was greatly shaken; memory came flooding back. Though this memory may be somewhat unreal through the passage of time, it is very complete and logical.

It was not long after I first started primary school, one day near Children's Day (June 1st), when five yuan went missing at home. That day both my third and fourth uncles had seen me out buying cigarettes to smoke; I had even, like an adult, offered them a puff, and they told my father I was smoking. My father was furious, thinking I was going bad, and naturally assumed the money for the cigarettes might have been stolen from home.

As a child I was truly too mischievous: before two I had set the house on fire; later, playing with a cart, I destroyed a wheelbarrow my father had bought; I often turned a stool upside down, seat on the ground, and rode it like a scooter down very steep slopes. Once I split my head open; my fourth uncle and aunt saw and rushed me to the hospital for emergency care. I was so daring and exploratory that a child like me must have been a terrible headache to raise.

So my father, at the time, wanted to teach me a good lesson, to beat it into me for life never to steal and never to take what was not mine. Near the school playground he beat me severely, demanding I hand over the unspent, stolen money. I could not hand it over, because the money I'd used for cigarettes was the Children's Day allowance my parents had given me in advance—only a few mao; a pack of cigarettes then cost less than a jiao.

My father, beside himself with rage, beat me with a thin bamboo pole, raising welts and bloody streaks on my legs. Neighbors nearby saw he was beating me too hard; they told him that if the child had been beaten like that and still would not admit it, he must not have stolen it. They held my father back while shouting at me: "Run, Zhiyuan! Run! Don't just stand there taking it."

Wrongly accused, I stood there stubbornly motionless, letting my father go on beating me, furious inside yet unable to explain. Later my mother found the five yuan at home; my father had hidden it under the leg of the table—it was the place where he habitually hid money, but he had forgotten and could not find it, and naturally assumed I had stolen it.

That day my father was consumed with regret; that night, at my bedside, he apologized to me almost in tears. My mother, stroking the weals on my legs, was heartbroken; I only whimpered and said nothing.

The chain reaction this brought was beyond my father's expectations. My Chinese teacher was my uncle by marriage—my mother's sister had married into the same village. A few days later, before the whole class, he accused me of going to his home and stealing exercise books. His reasoning: if even your father says you are a thief, you are a thief; if you didn't steal it, who did? I cried out my defense, but no one believed me. Later, when a one-yuan coin belonging to the village chief's son went missing, everyone again blamed me, saying I had stolen it; several children set upon me and beat me until my nose bled.

With no way to defend myself, I simply became extraordinarily strong after that. I almost always licked my own wounds; I strove for everything on my own and never troubled anyone. From high school on I lived on scholarships, trying not to use my parents' money. And I imposed on myself an almost harsh moral standard; I could hardly forgive myself for any small wrong. I would rather sacrifice myself than hurt anyone. Together with the forbearance education my grandmother gave me, these things shaped my personality.

I finally understood why I have acted all my life with such self-abandoned altruism, such intense sympathy for the weak, and so rarely a moment of self-interest. I wept several times over this recollection; I released that wronged little boy inside me, still standing there stubbornly and taking the beating.

I have never hated my parents, and I do not bear a grudge in this matter either. I know my father did it to raise a child of good character—and indeed he succeeded; throughout my upbringing I was always excellent in conduct and grades. They gave up so much to get me out of the countryside; though our family's circumstances were hard, my father never wavered in his resolve, scrimping and saving to pay for my schooling. They also gave me abundant love; I was not actually lacking in security. It is just that this particular hurt, developed to what it is now, was unknown to them.

I am someone who does not know how to protect himself. One day my beloved teacher said to me: Zhiyuan, you have worked tirelessly all your life, giving off light and heat like the sun; but your teacher and his wife also hope you can be as gentle and soft as the moon. He could see my problem, but not where it lay. Yet my teacher is a man of great wisdom; he told me that after going through great sorrow and joy, great right and wrong, I would blossom late.

For me personally, this past year has undoubtedly been a great upheaval of the soul, and I have grown through it once more. After I discovered my depression, I at once understood that, apart from my own deep self-observation, no one could help me out of this whirlpool. Because my parents made me too clever and raised me to be too diligent, few people read as much as I do. Even my teacher, who nurtured me into what I am, can no longer easily help his beloved pupil—the deep mysteries of the human soul are not so easily explored. So for someone like me, only self-rescue under external stimulation can succeed.

Shinmoedake, the Japanese hundred-year-old physician, said that he spent his whole life exploring his own inner world, and even at a hundred still found many mysteries in himself, making new discoveries again and again. Life is like that: pain is there to help us grow.

Every day I try hard to beat back the sadness in my heart. I know this is only a reactive mood disorder; once discovered it is easily swept away, and it is not as hard to treat as an inborn depression. But I also know it may at this stage cause cognitive distortions, making me pessimistically expect the worst in relationships and hurting the people who love me. So I will, in the way I am best at, express my feelings through writing, build guardrails for myself, reconstruct my life, and learn to protect myself.

At the same time, I am preserving a sample for the healing of depression. I am a born physician, and it is my duty to heal others even as I heal myself; this is my mission.