LIFE IN THE RUT

I just finished listening to "Rut" from The Killers over and over again. Frontman Brandon Flowers has been uncharacteristically open about this song addressing his wife Tana's struggles with complex PTSD. The words also speak directly to my own mental health battles, and I've been crying hard for the past couple of hours.

I'm alone tonight. My family is visiting my wife's grandmother in Southern Utah, and I have time to think and feel.

So what's it like to actually live in the rut? It's more than a few bad days. For me, it's a thorny reminder that my former capacity is no longer my reality. It's embarrassing. It's frustrating. It feels like incompetence, and frankly, it's a blow to my pride. Mostly, I'm just exhausted by a hopeless optimism that tells me I'll get out someday if I work hard enough. But I only climb to fall. The walls around me repeatedly stack up a step faster than I can scale them.

In an interview with Q, Flowers confessed that writing this song “helped me understand what [Tana] was going through because I could put words to it, wrap my head around it and really navigate it. A lot of relationships fall apart when these things happen.” I suppose the relationship part is what made me cry tonight, and the desperate plea "Don't give up on me" doesn't quite explain it.

In the music video, there is a brief scene where the struggling woman pulls her hand away from the man trying to comfort her. The lines in the song "Hey, I won't blame you baby / Go on, turn your head" hit me deeply. I'm not sure exactly what Brandon meant by them, but I often push my wife away when I need her most because, even when I am dying inside, I want to protect her from the pain of my mental state. In doing so, I inevitably hurt her anyway. But I also feel so unloveable that I fully expect her to turn away, and even coax her to do so as a confirmation of my own self-loathing. At the same time, I'm hoping against hope that each time I run away, she will chase after me. It's not fair, but even as I reject her, I'm internally begging for recognition that the real me is there beneath the pain, still longing for connection. Maybe I'm seeking validation for something that I'm not even sure I believe anymore—that there's still something left in me to offer the world. "So I'm handing you a memory / I hope you understand / That steadily reminds you / Of who I really am." Lately, despite "my best defending," "the punches are starting to land" again, and hard. Unfortunately, I'm already in the advanced rounds of the toughest fight of my life. My legs are tired, often numb actually, and rope-a-dope isn't a viable strategy anymore. "I can't keep pretending this next stop isn't mine / The truth is on the table, and someone's gotta sign." I get it. This is my life now, and I need to keep trying. But after taking so many shots to the face, I'm running out of cheeks to turn. And depression doesn't care. Even as I type tonight, "I'm [yet again] sliding into something / You won't understand."

Honestly, I hate the rut, but that's where I live. And, though I regularly express it less gracefully than I should, I am so grateful for the sacrifice of my wife and others who willingly descend there with me. In the song's conclusion, two individuals seem to plead with each other to not give up the fight: "Don't give up on me" and "Don't you give up." It's hard for me to cope with the reality that my mental health status often invites two to tango in my depressive ditch, but I pray we can keep dancing long enough to someday reach higher ground—together.

For now, "I'll climb and I'll climb," even if the rut is deep, and I can't quite see over the walls yet. –DPWISEMAN