Ever since my friend B started reading this blog he's always pushed me towards writing a novel.
I always just roll my eyes and blow off the idea. I know I keep this blog and I know a lot of bloggers want to be "discovered," but I don't have those aspirations.
Now, as an English major in college I'm pretty sure I harbored dreams about being a published author. But, I've never wanted to be Milton, Chaucer, Welty or even Danielle Steele. I wanted to be Judy Blume, Lois Duncan or Paula Danziger.
The trouble is . . . I don't feel like I have much to say.
I don't even blog very regularly anymore.
I was diagnosed with clinical depression 18 months ago and while most days are okay days a lot of days are a struggle. It's a fight to get out of bed to go to work. forget about me getting on the blog to say something entertaining. I haven't had it in me to do that for a while. Funny things happen in my life, but the white noise of depression drowns those things out quickly.
And God, I've never been able to get a handle on how to respond to my well-meaning mother when she says, "Oh, I've been depressed, Melissa. You just have to pick yourself up and decide to be happy."
This makes my blood boil and I want to get in her face and scream, "You don't fucking get it!"
It's not her fault.
Maybe she's had the blues in her life, but she doesn't know the way depression is like quicksand and the more you try to fight the more it feels like it's pulling you down.
Then this year while watching the Tony Awards I saw the cast of Next to Normal perform the following:
Next to Normal
DIANA (spoken)
You know, really?
What exactly do you know?
DAN (spoken)
I know you're hurting. I am, too.
DIANA
Do you wake up in the morning and need help to lift your head?
Do you read obituaries and feel jealous of the dead?
It's like living on a cliffside not knowing when you'll dive.
Do you know, do you know what it's like to die alive?
When the world that once had color fades to white and gray and black.
When tomorrow terrifies you, but you'll die if you look back.
You don't know.
I know you don't know.
You say that you're hurting, it sure doesn't show.
You don't know.
You tell me let go.
And you may say so, but I say you don't know.
The sensation that you're screaming, but you never make a sound.
Or the feeling that you're falling, but you never hit the ground.
It just keeps on rushing at you day by day by day by day.
You don't know, you don't know what it's like to live that way.
Like a refugee, a fugitive, forever on the run.
If it gets me it will kill me, but I don't know what I've done.
End Scene
I was devastated when I saw this scene because I felt like I'd been broken open and all of my secrets had tumbled out.
I wanted to stand up and say, "There . . . that is what I feel like every fucking day so don't tell me I can just pick myself up and shake this thing off."
Maybe I have things to say, but it feels futile when others have already said it so much better than I ever will.
