30th May, 2006
Memory
A girl on a bike keeps circling the block. Repeating as she has done numerous times before. Time marches inexorably on.
I remember sitting in the den of my step-father’s house – my mom happened to live there at the time – I was in college, the first year or so, and I still had a tremulous relationship with my mother. We sat there, my mother and I, one weekend evening watching the Comedy Channel. Some sort of comic spotlight. Def Comedy Jam. I have no idea. I think there was a brick background involved. And a stool. A glass of water. All of this is inconsequential. This comedian, I think male – again, it does not matter- related some story of being stoned and I laughed. Not just a chuckle, but one of those uncontrollable belly laughs that wells up from deep within your being. About midway through my laugh, I noticed my mom was silent. At this time, two things passed through my adolescent, 19 year old mind: one was: oh fuck, she knows I’m a stoner. The second: that was really funny.
Nothing ever came from this. I never mentioned the show and neither did she. Time went on and our relationship progressed to its inevitable ending. (That’s another story.)
She passes again.
Cut to present day. I watched what I think was the end of Trailer Park Boys (snagged through BitTorrent since no US carriers will air it). There is a scene where, after smoking some marijuana, one of the characters is shown sipping ranch dressing, much like a fine wine to accent someone’s tournedos de boeuf, a handful of mass-market white bread in his other hand. And I laugh. I laugh every time I walk down the condiment aisle at the grocery. I doubt I will ever laugh so hard in my life, simply due to the fact that I was there. To someone who has never experienced it, it will probably elicit either confusion, disdain, mild humor due to stereotypes.. any number of things, but it won’t be funny. You had to have experienced that for it to register.
And that brings me to the rest of my life. Perspective. Whether I knew it or not, I’ve been living with depression for a long while now. It is a part of me. It has shaped me. It helps define who I am. Dealing with depression, as I suppose dealing with any sort of disease, is sometimes difficult to put into words. The emotions are there but it seems as though the English (or any?) language is incapable of truly expressing them. One thing that I have noticed is that it is infinitely simpler to explain depressive feelings to someone who has experienced it themselves than it is to explain such feelings to those who are fortunate enough to be ignorant of such. I don’t feel elitist about this, or that I and other sufferers are somehow above those who have escaped such feelings. Instead, I feel at a loss, I feel discouraged that I am unable to communicate such feelings. Sometimes I feel like humans need to evolve a little further so we can communicate empathetically. Maybe speaking from the heart would help heal a lot of the hatred that we have today. I don’t know what the answer is, all I know is that experience, until we stumble upon some other solution, is the key.
The girl passes, a final time, intent on maintaining forward momentum. Perhaps oblivious to her surroundings. Life goes on.
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