“When I was 14, I woke up one morning and my dad had died. I never knew how sick he was. Nobody told me anything.” He – a boulder of a man – crumbled and started crying. ”I am sorry but I think you have the right to know.” And then he told me. I screamed. We reached out to hold each other when he suddenly froze and took a step back.
Blood was gushing from my nose.
…
I took an online depression test and scored 53 out of 60, which I guess was bad. It urged me to seek help immediately and offered a suicide hotline number. I then called my doctor and got an automated recording. Then I took another, more elaborate depression test. It took me 20 fucking minutes to fill in. When it had generated the lengthy report to assess my level of depression, it showed me the first page and told me that I had to pay 6 dollars to get the rest of it sent as a PDF file. What in the actual fuck? I then tried to book a session with my therapist but her online booking system had crashed. I am no more depressed than I can appreciate the comical aspects of that whole fucking thing.
Benny Hill be playing in da background.
…
I asked: “How do YOU cope?”
The kid said: ”I just make sure I am never alone with my thoughts. If I have two minutes of not doing anything, I Facebook, put on music or audio books immediately. I divert. I drown out all thoughts. I just make sure I am never, ever, ever alone with my thoughts.”
That makes me so sad.
…
Everything is made worse by this not-so-nusery-rhyme playing in my head:
My dad has Alzheimer’s. My kid is being tested for [ ]. My mom has cancer. My thesis is due in October. I need to get a new job. I don’t know what to do. My dad has Alzheimer’s. My kid is being tested for [ ]. My mom has cancer. My thesis is due in October. I need to get a new job. I don’t know what to do. My dad has Alzheimer’s. My kid is being tested for [ ]. My mom has cancer. My thesis is due in October. I need to get a new job. I don’t know what to do. My dad has Alzheimer’s. My kid is being tested for [ ]. My mom has cancer. My thesis is due in October. I need to get a new job. I don’t know what to do.
[I don’t know what to do.]
…
I try to take on a cosmic perspective. The first and most simple life form – a germ, basically, emerged about 3.8 billion years ago. Dinosaurs ruled the earth and all went extinct 65 million years ago. Homo Sapiens can be dated back 200,000 years. At best, recorded human history covers all of 8,000 years.
I think about the image I saw showing that if the whole age of the earth is represented by the Empire State Building, with the formation of the earth at street level – then all recorded human history would be represented by a postage stamp laid flat on the top of the radio tower at the summit.
We are a bleep. Energy. Dust of the starts. Transformation of matter. Everyone one who ever was and anyone who will ever be, shall die. So we are not alone. We are in this together.
[I am all alone.]
…
She is hospitalized going on week three. There she lies, as skinny as she always wanted to be. Tasteful makeup and hair immaculate. “Is that… Are you wearing perfume?”, I ask. “Well, of course!” she says. The woman next to her is drowning in her own lungs. She crashed and a tsunami of doctors and nurses came running, pulling the curtain to my mother’s bed in an almost ironic attempt at privacy. And my mum quietly slips into her Prada loafers (that she got on sale, which means that in her world she actually SAVED money by buying them!), in a washed-out hospital robe and with the tubes and bags hanging out. And goes down to smoke. She sends me hilarious texts and tells me to stop worrying so much.
I cannot imagine the world without her in it. I love her so much.
…
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