Young And Depressed: Prozac Nation
*Note: This is a fictionalised account of events. Any resemblance to any living persons, animals, things etc are purely coincidental.
Being told that everyone else is normal and you're different because of the way you are and you cannot really help it. And it sucks because you will always be different and sometimes you sort of forget what being different means and that is good. And then you remember and it feels the same, like She wants to unwrite those words; they seem callous and written by a Republican who drank white wine. She is not pretending to suffer. That's the worst part. When you don't need to pretend and you do. She feels the need to express the disgust she feels at herself but the feeling of inability to stop it. Like when you run down a hill and cannot stop yourself. I'm different, I don't have to pretend.
She was so different, in some ways she suspected it triggered the depression. Bouts of maddening obliteration. She was Punjabi, female, graduated with a degree from some college that she wanted to go to, gotten a boyfriend, who didn't drink and who went to the synagogue. She had been really, really happy.
She'd planned the wedding, drawn up a list of people she'd invite, planned for the rugged photographs they'd take in the early days of their marriage , in plaid, checkered shirts and blue jeans and they'd smile for the camera. She even wrote out lists of baby names, decided 6 girls and 2 boys. She met her future in-laws and they'd loved her, immediately, she'd said she'd convert.
On pink paper in their student apartment, she'd written beautifully, the names of her future daughters- Tamara, Talia, Maya, Yael, Noya, Rivka. And on blue paper, she'd written the names David and Elijah. His last name was Kaufman and she'd wanted the children's names to be as Hebrew as possible.
Angry now, she tore the papers and flung it at the floor. The stupid papers, what did they know of her children? The typewriter enraged her, sitting on the table it was so boxy and ugly she threw it on the floor.
Everything was all gone. Between the bursts of grief, she hugged the typewriter. She had caused this. By crying and throwing things, and trying to explain to him that she was normal, she couldn't help it. There was absolutely no reason for her to go down under the sorrow that she would fail at everything, that she would never get a degree, that her marriage would fail, that she would have miscarriages. She had worked herself up into a state of delirium, that she would fail, if she didn't achieve these things and quickly sadness turned to anger and then helplessness and it had frightened him.
She'd went and bought that book everyone was reading , everyone HAD been reading. Her best friend said it had helped her immensely with her depression. Not that she'd actually come right up and confessed it, that would've been shameful in her eyes. No, she'd seen her comment on some book recommendation page, under her favourite pseudonym.
Reading about other people's sadness helps cure your own. There is something eternally true about the statement that nothing brings greater joy than other people's sadness.
Prozac Nation. She read it, and she didn't cry. Not once. Petulantly, she agreed with her friend. They were both young and depressed, in this prozac nation.
The long drag of a cigarette brings some brief respite from the swirling thoughts in her head. What did it all mean? The anger, the joy, the pain, the depression? Surely, it must have had some significance? There must have been some difference from her actions to the actions of the many, many middle class maniacs before her who'd have done the same things?
Look, she types, banging it out on the keyboard. Look, you idiot. The key to being profound is to be depressed. Not sad, but depressed which is essentially being sad with the flab cut out. No crap. You look the world in its eyes through your tears.
Being deep, her fingers spell, being deep is . She doesn't know. Everytime she tries, she is told to stop lying. Her mother has read her work, the work she is proud of having created, from veiny hands and sallow skin, but her mother tells her to stop exaggerating. Think of the poor people who are sad.
Sadness can be incurable. It's like being a minority, gosh darn.
She was so different, in some ways she suspected it triggered the depression. Bouts of maddening obliteration. She was Punjabi, female, graduated with a degree from some college that she wanted to go to, gotten a boyfriend, who didn't drink and who went to the synagogue. She had been really, really happy.
She'd planned the wedding, drawn up a list of people she'd invite, planned for the rugged photographs they'd take in the early days of their marriage , in plaid, checkered shirts and blue jeans and they'd smile for the camera. She even wrote out lists of baby names, decided 6 girls and 2 boys. She met her future in-laws and they'd loved her, immediately, she'd said she'd convert.
On pink paper in their student apartment, she'd written beautifully, the names of her future daughters- Tamara, Talia, Maya, Yael, Noya, Rivka. And on blue paper, she'd written the names David and Elijah. His last name was Kaufman and she'd wanted the children's names to be as Hebrew as possible.
Angry now, she tore the papers and flung it at the floor. The stupid papers, what did they know of her children? The typewriter enraged her, sitting on the table it was so boxy and ugly she threw it on the floor.
Everything was all gone. Between the bursts of grief, she hugged the typewriter. She had caused this. By crying and throwing things, and trying to explain to him that she was normal, she couldn't help it. There was absolutely no reason for her to go down under the sorrow that she would fail at everything, that she would never get a degree, that her marriage would fail, that she would have miscarriages. She had worked herself up into a state of delirium, that she would fail, if she didn't achieve these things and quickly sadness turned to anger and then helplessness and it had frightened him.
She'd went and bought that book everyone was reading , everyone HAD been reading. Her best friend said it had helped her immensely with her depression. Not that she'd actually come right up and confessed it, that would've been shameful in her eyes. No, she'd seen her comment on some book recommendation page, under her favourite pseudonym.
Reading about other people's sadness helps cure your own. There is something eternally true about the statement that nothing brings greater joy than other people's sadness.
Prozac Nation. She read it, and she didn't cry. Not once. Petulantly, she agreed with her friend. They were both young and depressed, in this prozac nation.
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