The Small Deaths That Kill Us

I don’t like talking about this. Very few know about it, and fewer still understand it. I suffer from depression. And I mean really suffer. But not as much as my wife. I can be the prick of the universe without medication. With it, my chemical instability is under control, my life is normal, and I’m actually a pretty nice guy.

Recently, due to a pissing contest between my doctor and the insurance company, I was rationing my meds. I started by taking them every other day, then every third day, then went without for about a week. In the bewildering grey funk that inevitably follows, I thought about when I first saw the beginnings of my disease. I think I’ve found the exact instant.

My parents introduced me to reading, the best gift I ever got, and supported my voracious appetite for books. I read Peter Pan, The Runaway Robot, Charlotte’s Web. My basically sweet nature made me susceptible to anything adventurous, mysterious, and exciting. I was a naïve and hopeless romantic. (Not in the love sense, but in the swashbuckling, heroic, neato environment way. I still am.)

In the fifth grade, my teacher introduced us to Shakespeare. It was love at first read. We put on plays for the school and our parents, and I found I had an aptitude for the dramatic. I always got the lead, I trend that continued until I gave up the boards in my later youth.

My leading lady was S. She was a year older, just blossoming into womanhood. She was tall. She was gawky. She was smart. She played the piano. My eleven year-old heart was smitten. She played Kate to my Petruchio in our elementary presentation of “The Taming of the Shrew.”

At the end of the year, as young boys are wont, I had to tell her of my feelings. I wrote a note, with painstaking attention to words. It went something like: “Dear S, I really like you. I had fun acting with you. I wish we could be boyfriend and girlfriend. Do you feel the same way? Love, Petruchio”

About thirty minutes before the bell on the last day of school, I met her on the playground. I sheepishly handed her the note, saying “This is for you,” and ran away. Recess was over, and I went back to my 5th grade room with my classmates, most of whom I had known almost all my life.

Ten minutes before the final bell, a 6th grader came in and said “Mrs. Chambers wants to talk to you. (In this instance, I use Mrs. Chambers real name, because if you meet her in Hell, I hope you’ll give her an extra eye gouge.) My teacher dismissed me, and I walked over to the scary hallowed Room of the Sixth Graders.

I immediately went numb. The kids were all looking at me and snickering. Standing like the left hand of righteousness was Mrs. Chambers, MY NOTE IN HER HAND. She looked at me with…what? Disdain? Glee? Arrogance? With three words, she forever shattered my world:

“She says no.” The class erupted in vicious laughter.

I learned years later that S, the object of my affection, carried that moment with her as well. Someone had grabbed the note as she was reading it, and gave it to the teacher. She was mortified.

I can’t begin to explain how I felt as my face burned, trying to hold back the tears, as I ran back to my classroom, the kids asking what happened, the teacher asking if I was okay. Humiliation doesn’t come close. Nor does terror. All I know is that, like Darth Vader, I had started my first step to hating the world, distrusting everything and everyone. I lit the first coal that burns against the world, with the intensity of a thousand suns, that I still carry deep in my breast. I learned and important lesson that day: There is nothing the world loves more than the sweet taste of a romantic’s dreams.

I sit here alone in a bar now while I write this. As I regain my sanity, thanks to my doctor, I think I understand myself a little better.

But some scars never heal.