depression

I’m a Buffoon

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All I could think in those moments when my name would be written on the board was, my cheeks are saying more than I ever would out loud. I hate that scene from grade school when I would be called out. There was no dunce hat on a stool in the corner, but it sure felt like it. My friends, my crushes, my nemeses were all inwardly raising their eyebrows at the mention of those syllables my parents gave me at birth. It’s her, I imagine them uttering. Gah! The shame.

The same flush happens every time I stumble upon one of those lists. You know the ones: 100 things to never say to a bearded woman; 15 things to avoid saying to someone who’s just been bit by rabid monkeys; 5 ways to encourage a friend who has decided to live solitary in the woods for two years. All right, not quite like those but I think you get the picture. Every time I see one I fight the urge to raise my hand in a guilty plea of confession. It’s me, this list is going to expose all my ignorance.

Yep, nearly 10 times out of 10 I’ve said the wrong thing to a hurting person. If I haven’t said it, I’ve thought it. My only saving grace is that there might be more on the list I haven’t said than ones I have. I scour through the items doing a mental check.

I said that.
And that, but that one isn’t so bad. I mean, it’s true.
Oh. Oh dear. This one’s bad. I need to make a call, and offer my firstborn.

But can I take a second for us nincompoops? I get it. I’ve been through enough crises and traumatic events to know how grating the wrong comment, the total missed mark, the insensitive feels. It sucks. And I also know that on the other side, in the space where we come eye to eye with you who are in knee-buckling pain, we desperately want to go there with you. We want to see it, feel it, and come alongside you in it, even though it’s like we’re groping for a light switch in a dark room. With grief that can mold into different shapes at any given moment, with processes that are never alike in two people, it’s difficult to know what the exact right thing is at the exact right time.

I had a friend who was depressed. I’ve been there and I thought I knew what I was doing with her. I texted, invited, said I’d be there to talk it out because that’s what I have needed in those situations. More people. She, was the opposite. I actually Googled: How to Love Someone Who’s Depressed. It turns out she needed blankets wrapped over her head and groceries in her pantry without ever stepping into a store. She needed quiet and sleep and presence without any demand of words she didn’t have. 

So know, we buffoons who you want to slap, we care.

And at least we’re saying something, even if it’s the wrong thing. Teach us the language. Plus, you never know when someone might have great shaving tips.

 

“It’s more like walking around after you’ve had your eyes dilated.” (Two Parts)

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“Oh, it’s a fluffy novel,” I said to the man who’d gotten me to pull my face up. With a cup of sugar and cream, and a little coffee I had been waiting for my friend to slide into the booth with me. While I waited, I read. Mindlessly. Until I was interrupted.

His skin was as richly dark as the cocoa he kept with him, which he almost forgot.
“You’ll need this for tomorrow,” the waitress said with familiarity.
“Thank you.” And he turned to me. “Now this, this is my chocolate on one side and cinnamon on the other.”
A regular. A man with plenty of time and a keen sense of down-home, old-fashioned, save-your-soul food. I liked him already.

“I just read a great book called The Historian,” he said beneath the weight of his book bag. “It was on the bestseller list.” 

“Oh OK. I’ll have to check it out. So what do you do? Do you write or work while you’re here?” 

“Yeah I write. I learned when I was about eight or nine.” 

Huh. Retired, and losing it. But then he laughed.

“I’m kidding. No I just ride my bike and come here every morning to read. And I ride my bike. (He said it twice, which for some reason I need to note. It’s part of how he charmed me.) Sometimes I mow. What do you do?”

“Well I have three kids-” 

“You? You have three kids? I thought you were in high school.” 

Mr. Rudy, my new friend, I love you.    

*

That’s what I planned to write today. And though I love it, I need to get brutally honest. It is the best writing, isn’t it? The kind that’s actually relatable. Not to say that cute, retired men in hole-in-the-wall restaurants aren’t relatable. But it’s not what is really in me.

How do I say it? How do I start? These are the words that I penned in blue at the top of my journal this afternoon. “I’m speechless. I am without speech,” Elaine from Seinfeld would say. And it is where I rest right now.

Some would call it a fog, a black cloud, a sheet covering, depression. I think it’s more like walking around after you’ve had your eyes dilated. It’s like being in the bottom of an empty gravesite and looking up without a clue how to climb out. It’s blah.

I haven’t been able to shake it for more than 24 hours, and I don’t often come to this place, though I recognize the décor. I have been here before.

I don’t know how I came, what pushed me in, but it sucks. And if you’ve visited, you know.

I could eat. If I do I’ll go for carbs, and sweets. Lots of them. Chips (my weakness), chocolate (my other weakness), peanut butter with chocolate (wait a second…there’s a pattern here), pasta, or anything else that would fill the void between my fingers and not in my heart.

I could check out with movies. Seinfeld, always Seinfeld. In good times and bad it is eternally a good choice. Ever After, Twilight, anything Jack Black, a multitude of Nicholas Sparks, What About Bob, The Princess Bride. I would be distracted, it would work. For a little bit.

Undoubtedly, I would still come up empty.

So I stay in it. I accept that this is where I reside.
And I wait, because God never lets me suffer forever.