Pool of Tears

Well, I guess NOW you have something to cry about . . .

 

`I wish I hadn’t cried so much!’ said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. `I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That WILL be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.’

–          Alice in Wonderland

 

Is it possible, like Alice, to drown in your own tears?   I am a champion crier, having started practicing in infancy, and further perfecting the art during sessions of “The Lord of the Flies” on the playground in public school.  Why cry so much?  Is it because I was orphaned at a young age with no money, food, or decent clothes and had to sell matches on the street until Hans Christian Anderson mercifully killed me?   No, I’m not the poor little match girl, or the little mermaid, or any of his other pathetic characters (What DID people do to Anderson anyway?  I want to go back in time and give him Zoloft.)  Wait . . . where was I?

Thank you so bloody much, Hans

Oh, yes, on top of an apparent case of ADHD, I have depression.  It’s not something I go around advertising, because shockingly this is not a very popular condition.  If you have heart disease, people go aw, and tell you to take your little nitroglycerin pills, which confuses me, because I had always thought nitroglycerin blew you up.  I guess in that case you wouldn’t have to worry about heart disease at least.

But with depression, people get all uncomfortable.  It’s like saying you’re gay.  Suddenly people of the same sex think you’re going to be filled with uncontrollable lust for them.  I’m straight, not gay, yet somehow able to stop myself from jumping every man I see (oh, sometimes it’s an effort, being the slutty librarian I am).  But I can control my impulses.  And I’m not contagious (although I do think some really irritating people are carriers of depression). 

Proof that humanity is lost

 

So I take medication, and I pay someone to listen to me whine.  And most of the time, I’m okay.  And I walk among you, indistinguishable from the normal population – like pod people.  Or Republicans.  But sometimes I’m overwhelmed, and I have to go off by myself and cry.  And cry.  Until I get this massive headache, which is no fun at all, because I didn’t even get to be happy drunk first. 

Depression isn’t just a mental disease; it’s physical too.  You have no energy, so you lay there like a slug, and you revel in lying there like a slug, because the entire world is awful what with all the crime, pollution, poverty, and Twilight movies.  You see the world through dark-colored glasses, so all the bad is magnified.  You might not have a terminal illness, but you did have a funny cough earlier and a pain in your hip.  Whatever you do, don’t research your symptoms on WebMd.

You have every one of these diseases.  Happy?

 

You did, didn’t you?  So now you are worried that you have an incurable disease, on top of your sadness about the general state of the world, and the fact that people will actually wear dresses like this in public. 

 

And then you get off the couch, and you go out to work, or the store, or something, and invariably there are people there.  And these people will annoy you by breathing.  You have to do something about this, and unfortunately, murder is generally frowned upon.  You must either find some sort of way to get through it, or you go back to being the couch slug.

Get off the couch!  No, you can’t be a slug.  There is no money in being a slug, unless you’re either independently wealthy or a Congressman.  So you take your medicine, if the doctor says you need it (he has a medical degree, dufus99 on the Internet most likely does not).  And you get counseling, if that helps you.  And you find something, anything, that makes you happy.  I’m sure there’s something.  For me, it’s laughing at stupid people, but whatever works for you.

Depression is the great lie.  It is the Jabberwock that hides in the closet of your mind.  But depression doesn’t define who I am, anymore than heart disease defines Ronald McDonald (just say no to Big Macs, clown!)  So sometimes I, as my aunt used to say as a child, have me a little cryin’ spell.  But then I have to pick yourself up and go after that white rabbit, because he’s not going to chase himself, and if I stick around I might just drown in my own tears.  And there’s too much of Wonderland to see yet, to do that.