Hopeless Bleak Despair

A deeply personal essay on grief, depression, and survival through They Might Be Giants’ “Hopeless Bleak Despair.”

Hi! My name’s Chase Roper and I’m writing about every song by They Might Be Giants. If you like TMBG or if you like connecting with people’s lives through writing, you’ll like this newsletter. Either way, thanks for being here.

I’m sitting in a living room with a few of my closest friends who are also writers as we listen to international jazz and enjoy some talkative writing time. The lighting is dim but the vibes are happy and strong. This is the perfect setting for me to dig into a song that tends to pull me deep into the Big Dark Sad.

The first time I remember feeling the weight of the world pressing down on my soul was shortly after my grandad died. He was my mom’s dad and everyone on her side of the family got weird with their grief. I remember feeling that depressed isolation hit me. Just feeling really alone. Misunderstood. And both of those were true. Not even a year later, near the end of my 9th grade year, my closest uncle accepted his own invitation to exit this mortal coil. An invitation that he had written on a handgun.

That loss reached into me and flipped a switch. I’m sure my variety of mental illness would have activated around that age regardless but that particular catalyst set me into motion. A new friend moved into my mind. A not-particularly-nice friend that constantly offered me negative feedback on how others see me, that I’m running out of time, and that my existence holds no meaning in the universe.

And that after I’m gone, everything will eventually carry on as if I was never here - into infinity.

Sitting on the Mink Car album in the ninth track spot, Hopeless Bleak Despair shares the middle album point with Yeh Yeh. And what a polar opposite it is. Where Yeh Yeh provided an optimistic, hope filled curtain call for the end of Act 1, Hopeless Bleak Despair is a beautiful sounding piece of music that is countered with absolute disparity.

When It Followed Me Home

I never knew what everybody meant
By endless, hopeless, bleak despair
Until one day when I found out
The first time I ever left my house
It saw me and followed me home
And stayed with me for my whole life

The singer (John Linnell) is telling the listeners that they never used to understand what it was to have depression until the first time they ever stepped outside of their home. That is to say, all it took was to step foot into the real world one time and the depression, dread, and grim outlook were officially taking permanent residence. This depression drove away his family, cost him his job, and made him undesirable in the eyes of everyone around him.

For years and years I wandered the earth
Until I died and went to hell
But my despair had ascended to heaven
That's how I finally got rid of it

Toward the end of the song, we hear the lyric above and it sounds as though the narrator is saying that after spending all of his years living with his depression, he was finally freed from it; after he died. But he also mentions that his despair ascended to heaven, while he died and went hell.

This is most likely exactly what it sounds like but I also hear this song another way. The first time we hear the chorus, the narrator sings:

And then, one day, it disappeared
In a puff of smoke
In an unceremonious way

In a puff of smoke.

I think that, much like my uncle when I was a 9th grader, the narrator ended his own despair, unceremoniously, at his own hands. At least, that’s how the song hit me the very first time I heard it. I listen to this song now, especially being off medication of any kind for the last four months, and I think about the long road that still lies ahead of me. The overthinking, the dread, the black hole in my chest that refuses to let any light escape once its dared to get to too close.

In an Unceremonious Way

Hopeless Bleak Despair also makes me think about my uncle. How much worse did he have it than me that made him find a way to be rid of his own hopeless, bleak, despair? Am I experiencing the same thing as him but without alcoholism and doctor prescribed lithium? I’ve definitely been very low. Like, “want to harm myself” low. I became a dad just a few years after he left the planet and having people who love you and knowing how soul crushingly devastating it is on the people left behind, always prevented anything from progressing in that area. It allowed me to learn that I’d rather do the work in therapy, find the right support system for myself and learn to live with this and move forward.

Even today, I don’t try to part ways with the sad friend who moved into my mind when I was a teenager. Instead, I’ve been spending decades learning how to listen to the message behind the despair, the negativity, and the intense emotions. I don’t imagine it will ever become easy, but it’s become familiar enough that it doesn’t surprise me the way it used to.

With the writing session wrapping up, and one of my friend’s wife arriving home to play some Resident Evil: Requiem, I think it’s time to wrap this up. Being in the company of these friends whom I love makes me happy. Being in the company of these friends whom I love makes me happy. Writing about and listening to this song all week has also made me sad.

Both of those things get to exist at the same time.

Which, as far as I can tell, is just… being alive. At least it is when you live with Type 2 Bi-polar Disorder.

Thanks for reading.

You’re reading one of my Mink Car essays. An album full of pop, depression, car accidents, and high fidelity.

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