The saddest thing in the whole
world is a depressed 16 year old.
One with a whole life ahead of her.
At an age when she is supposed to
be pretty, spunky, full of cheer and
those other Hindi movie attributes
16 years olds are supposed to be,
she thinks she has no life ahead of her.
She contemplates suicide.
She locks herself up in the room and
experiments with glue and Vicks vaporub
on a slice of bread and tries to slash
her wrists with a compass box divider
but fear of pain holds her back.
She sits in front of hardened shrink
who studies her like a case study and
collapses in front of him while he watches
her with cold clinical eyes as heartless
as a medico performing vivisection on a live bat.
It's tremendously sad.
To be watched like that while you collapse.
To be so near, yet so far from your professed helper.
To have him watch you through a
bullet proof glass barrier while you do
your mental gymnastics and he has a ringside seat.
To have people handle you like
an abnormal alien being.
Like an experiment.
Bleeding.
While you cry "kill me,"
they watch you like a freak show.
Do you know how sad that is?
The abnormally convoluted way
in which she views her Prozac
popping ritual as a sweet secret
which none of her friends can share?
The way it IS a ritual?
A thoughtless routine?
Anyway,
so she sits in front of her shrink,
while he studies her like a
case study and she says
"I feel --- I feel"
inarticulately and then,
like she made a brilliant discovery
about her own self-with the kind of conviction
and intonation in her voice
like when you are propounding a
significant philosophy of life --
something profound --
with that quality in her voice --
she says
"I feel like no matter what happens,
no matter how much things change,
no matter how my life gets better
for a few moments,
it will come back to this."
This same dreadful pessimism.
"I don't think I will ever get out of this"
Like Murphy's law she states it.
Like Chaos theory.
Like Einstein's theory of relativity,
like the stock markets random walk theory.
At the age of sixteen this is her thesis
of life -- her very own theory -- all rational,
scientific and empirically proven.
Her very own little contribution
to mankind's knowledge.
That her depression is never-ending.
That the blackness is forever.
Now tell me,
isn't it the saddest thing in the
whooooooooooooole world?
Like when I stretch my arms wide
till my body feels like a released spring and say
"whooooooooooole" world?
Could you find something that hurts you more?
To think of a little vulnerable girl woman
with a fragile ego and a mind so small that it
gets easily drowned in the grey dreadful blackness?
That the lumps rise
again and again
relentlessly
in her throat like
waves in a turbulent sea?
That they just won't give up?
No matter how much she thrashes around sadly?
Stupidly?
Ignorantly?
Lost in a blind alley?
And that's her only world.
So she accepts it as part of her life of course.
Like a child growing up as a laborer
in a match stick factory.
Like a 5 year old polio victim.
Like a man blind since his earlier memories.
Like Stephen Hawking with his amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Like twins.
Who don't even know what
it is like
to feel
or be
another way?
Or even if they do,
it slips away too soon,
like a pin prick of a memory.
Like an open safety pin in tube
for your pajama strings.
Unrecapturable.
Gone, slipped, right out of your fingers
like the intestines of a man.
And you keep trying to grab it,
if you are a rookie still, but
it's physically impossible.
It makes me want to cry ,
it makes me so infinitely sad --
doesnt it make you want to cry?
Or are you too hard hearted?
You got any love in your heart?
So why don't you feel it!
Feel her pain.
Feel the depth of her gooey blackness --
The inkiness of the ocean bottom with
predators of shiny eyes and hooks on
their body looming around her.
Feel that dynamic world of depression --
the fullness of it --
its all encompassing quality.
It's an alternate universe out there man!
In her heart.
One that Madame depression built.
It's conquered her, it rules her --
and you don't even know what it's like.
Can you feel it?
Can you feel your knees buckle when you know her pain?
Do you collapse?
Do you at least cry?
Oh depression, sweet depression,
part of my life since complex thought began.
I think I'll never really bid you goodbye.
You are too real,
too powerful,
too bulky,
too muscular for me.
It's like having the formidable
Mr. World for my rapist.
Your strong arms grab me and
lift me off the ground and I
don't even bother to fight.
The effort is futile and the hug is
distinctly erotic.
Sometimes I like it out of familiarity
so I won't even try to resist it.
And I am too weak to anyway.
Like I have just had an orgasm while standing up.
I can only fall now --
I can only give in.
And I do.
With an eagerness
and readiness
and mellowness
of a 22 year old who was depressed when
once she was 16.
And so I give in --
I slip lubricated by age into your welcoming arms.
I glide; I fly on great big albatross wings.
It's so easy now, ever so easy --
It's what I call my life.
