Maybe It Is Worth It

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This story is an experiment. It is somewhat based on my old diary entries in as far as the feelings of depression go. The characters and locations etc are all from my imagination. Unfortunately, the probability of explicit sex scenes at this stage is very minute. It may also be very dull to read at times (hopefully not all the time) and that is intentional. Living with depression is mostly about – well – nothingness, greyness and an empty void. Pain comes at times, but mostly it's the emptiness. I assure you that it will get brighter along the way, as the title suggests. The little snippets of information about science etc is accurate to the best of my knowledge but the opinions are just that – opinions. This information is not important in itself, but it serves a certain purpose in the main character's life that you will come to appreciate – if I write this as I have planned.

I really appreciate your comments. The only way to learn, I have come to believe, is by reflecting on feedback. To do that, one needs feedback to work with.

Chapter 2

I woke up very early on Sunday because I had gone to sleep before Dracula had left his coffin. I loved Sundays – though love' might be too strong a word. I doubt that I loved very much in the world. Except my cat, Isaac. I named him after the most brilliant man that ever lived – however peculiar and odd – Isaac Newton. Father of classical mechanics, his laws of motion were so enlightening, even though they have been superseded by quantum mechanics. His modification of Kepler's third law of planetary orbits was a stroke of brilliance. Not to mention the Principia'. Or that he invented the Calculus – I was never a Leibniz man. And all that he achieved he did so with only half his working life because he was so involved and obsessed with alchemy.

I missed him dearly – my cat, not Newton. I couldn't bring him with me and so I had to give him up to be re-housed. I couldn't expect my grandmother to look after him. Just one more thing I have lost in this lifetime. It was time to get up but I didn't want to. Whenever I didn't feel like getting out of bed I would stay in there for the whole day – sometimes several days, leaving only to go to the loo and to refill my water bottle. But I was trying to be strong. To explore college life.

My stomach started with its familiar tune and I got up to take a shower. With my shower gown wrapped tightly around me and my toiletry bag under my left arm, I left my room and went to the bathroom. Communal. I hated sharing the bathroom with boys for several reasons:

1)They were generally happy leaving pools of water all over the floor.

1. The sporty ones often came back from practice on rainy days only to leave mud all over the place.

2. They had no problem spitting into the bathroom sinks and leaving that glorious sight, with all its sliminess, for the next person.

3. The middle toilet was always blocked half-way through every week and yet they persistently used it.

4. Most of them were quite happy walking around naked and I didn't like that at all. It made me feel self-conscious. I had always hated my body. I had horrible skin from a mild case of acne and because I scarred quite easily. I had also done my body much damage when I decided I was too fat and had to lose weight. And lose it I did. I lost some 10kg and I was only 55kg to begin with. I had regained that weight but I looked a little like `Mangy Dog'.

I always spent as little time in the shower as possible. That was actually quite lengthy because I had long `kinky' black hair – like a true African. Drying it took several minutes. I'd made a decision not to cut it ever again. It was a random decision. I could be quite impulsive and illogical.

When I finished showering and brushing my teeth, I returned to my room to get dressed. I made sure I had my key card before leaving. I had been stuck outside many times before and had certainly learned my lesson. I made it to the dining hall, got cereal – always All Bran with soy milk or almond milk. My body had stopped producing lactase, as it should at my age, and so I couldn't digest lactose. I went to my usual spot. I ought to explain why this was my spot.

When I first got here after having crossed the Atlantic and Pacific to the North-east coast of the US, I was welcomed by several people who were orientation organisers. One of them was from the same part of Africa and so we had a lot to talk about. His name was Emi. He introduced me to some of his friends who were sophomores. When he took me to the dining hall, we sat down and this rather tall, very good-looking guy came over to talk to Emi.

"Aren't you going to introduce me?" he had asked at some point.

I had deliberately avoided looking up and was so intent on counting the number of peas on my plate – which was not a lot! And so I had started converting the number into binary.

"Oh my bad," was Emi's apology. "This is my new friend Felix – he's a freshman," he continued. Then he looked at me and said, "This is my good friend Thomas. He is a sophomore just like me".

I had taken a quick glance at him and found his brown eyes fixed on me. I had stared awkwardly at his hand before saying I was filthy and a great source of bacteria and pestilence, having been on a plane for 12 hours. He asked for a fist pump instead and I complied. He sat with us for lunch and I felt his eyes studying me from time to time. I never looked up at him the rest of that time. That had been 6 months ago.

Yet, I returned to the very spot every meal time. I wasn't obsessed or anything. In fact I didn't like him at all in a physical way. We'd had quite a lot of conversations on facebook and skype. Every time he was physical present I was so self-conscious and wanted to make up for what I lacked in physical beauty with what I considered a vast store of knowledge. So our conversations were limited to the intellectual realm. We'd spoken about philosophy quite a lot. It was my current fascination because I needed answers to life. Camus was my starting point and then I read Sartre. Since then, existential philosophy made so much sense.

Absurdism, as Camus wrote about it, was my religion. It all made sense though I disagreed with him on the point of suicide. I thought suicide was perfectly justified and anyone who claimed otherwise had not felt the darkness of clinical depression. I had gained some strength from reading those philosophers and other authors. Voltaire's Candide' had blown my mind away as had Tolstoy's Confession', not to forget Shakespeare's most philosophical play Hamlet'. This had been the subject of our conversations. We had veered into politics and had a most heated debate about Machiavelli's Prince'. I did not for a second buy into the notion that Machiavelli be excused for his callous ideas as the field of `comparative ethics' begged us to.

I had essentially told him I believed life to be meaningless and utterly pointless many times. Yet for some reason he still invited me to have dinner with him. I had no idea what it is that he really saw in me. But whatever it was, my mind had put up its defenses in place. I was worthless and I was never going to be happy and certainly not with him. He was too good. And so I always dismissed any inappropriate thoughts in the same manner. Besides, I knew for sure he was into the ladies with all their soft and tender what-nots.

I finished my food and grabbed several apples on the way out to store for later. When I returned to my room, I looked at my phone and I had quite a number of voice messages and texts: my lab partner wanted to know why I hadn't shown up to our scheduled meeting yesterday, my clarinet teacher wanted to know the same thing and there was a message from Thomas. It read: `You were not online last night'.

It was not a question, but an observation; an observation that was true, but there was nothing for me to add to it. He hadn't asked for an explanation but I knew it's what he wanted.

I responded: `Uhm, yeah I wasn't. Sorry. I was in the ER. I'm ok'.

I always apologized to people even if I was not at fault. It was automatic.

The voice messages were from my doctor who told me he had set up an appointment for me to have an EEG and he wanted me to see him the following day to get the results from the MRI and blood tests. I had quite a lot of work for the following day: history reading, lab report, a short French essay and to read Miller's `Crucible'.

I started with the easiest task of reading the Crucible'. I had read it several times before and I loved it. It was my favourite play by Arthur Miller, then Death of a Salesman'. I followed with the French essay. I started my lab report but I couldn't carry on. In the afternoon I could feel my concentration slipping away and I knew what would happen next.

I left my books as they were on my desk and got into bed. I always took my inability to focus for long periods of time as the ultimate proof of my worthlessness. I used to be good at it. I used to be good at a lot of things. I had been on the track team, taken ballet lessons, been in the debating team, dabbled in public speaking, taught myself composition, written an orchestral piece, given a few recitals...

Until that one day when everything crashed. Though to be honest, the signs had been there. I hadn't known what they were and because I hadn't had a close adult carer, most of the opportunities to stop the mighty crash had been missed. I should have known something was wrong. I should have... but it was late now for that kind of thinking.

I grabbed my laptop and put it on my mini refrigerator and watched the Big Bang Theory until I fell asleep.

Monday was horrible. I didn't want to get up. So I didn't. I sent a message to my Dean and told her I wasn't feeling well. I went back to sleep and drifted in and out of dreams. The next time I woke up it was midday and I was very hungry but I didn't care. I got up, got dressed, brushed my teeth and headed for the music room along with my clarinet.

I don't know how long I played for before I gave up and just sat on the floor crying. This wasn't what life was supposed to feel like. I decided that I couldn't do this much longer and that something had to change or I'd be insane `doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results'.

My phone vibrated, drawing me out of my destructive thoughts. It was a message from one of my female `friends' (more acquaintance than friend) asking that we meet for dinner. I asked if we could meet the following evening instead.

Back in my room, the apples I had taken from the dining hall served their purpose at last. I was agitated and bored but couldn't focus on anything. I opened my facebook – something I avoided at all costs because seeing all my high school friends' profiles made me sad. I was glad they were doing great things in the world; some were in the Ivys, a few in LSE and UCL in the UK. They were all those destinations where I would have ended up had I not `bummed' out.

Thomas was online. I'd always vow not to initiate contact but I always broke that vow.

"Hiya" I wrote.

"Hello" he responded.

"How are you doing today?"

"Not bad, and yourself?"

"Well, I'm unhappy that the world hasn't ended – I always hoped, since the postponement of the end of the world in 2012, that the calculations were just a little off but alas the margin error is simply too great. Given that its 2014 already."

"Maybe the sun will die soon"

"Not likely. Given the conversion rate of hydrogen nuclear into helium nuclei and the estimated mass of hydrogen, it still has about 1.5 X 10^17 seconds left. That is over 4 billion earth years! Not nearly soon enough." I had actually calculated that.

"Do you want to join me for dinner?" He asked.

"No thank you, I'm not up to seeing people at the moment."

"Have you eaten?"

"I had two apples."

"I'll bring you some food."

I had to stop him, so I wrote "That is very sweet of you but entirely unnecessary"

"Of course it's not necessary. I want to. I worry about you."

Great! I was now the object of pity. "Really Tom, I'll survive."

"Not without food. I'll see you in 10." And with that he was offline. Oh dear, I was starting to panic. I really did not want to see anyone. Anyone!

Not even him.