Tag Archives: Friendship

She Got Drunk

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We made Quesadillas and invited friends over for dinner. They were made with sliced up honey-barbecue chicken and tasted candied sweet, like avocado, although we hadn’t used any avocado. A conversation broke out about our friend who just recently seriously considered suicide while sober then again while drunk on Saturday and had to go the hospital. The quesadillas only tasted sour after that.

This is a different friend from yesterday’s post.

She’s had major depressive episodes and chronic depression for a while now, and its really sad, because she is incredibly talented, dedicated and cheery when she’s not haunted by the specter of her depression. It really does haunt her, too: We’ve tried to dispel it multiple times with conversation, love, care, counseling, and every time it lifts its ghostly lantern and leads her away into the dark again. Every time she think about suicide, she comes one step closer to committing to it. Recently, she tried to overdose on pain reliever, but didn’t take enough. When she tries to actually commit the act, she usually texts someone. There’s still a shred of her left fighting in there, who doesn’t want to let go of this world. We have to find it and protect it.

It’s difficult though, trying to help friends and family with depression. Common affirmations of the value of life tend to ring hollow to them – “it gets better” or “other people have it worse” makes there (often unexplained and persistent) sadness feel trivial or surmountable, when it doesn’t feel like that at all to them. As someone whose been depressed in the past . . . the one thing I wanted was for someone to say something to me that was actually true, and not say more bullshit, more generic help, just say yeah, it really does suck huh, yeah fuck living. Eventually, someone did say that, and it made me feel a lot better. I’ve said that to my friend before, and its helped, but it only wads off the specter for so long.

What she really needs is antidepressants. When the ghost of depression holds you so closely that he’s possessed your body, that”s the only way to force him out.

Dem Hips Do’

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People are awesome.

Okay, so they suck, but really, they’re awesome. Seeing the bright warm smile of a friend you haven’t seen in months amid the whitewashed winter landscape brightened my day. I was trudging through the mushy brown snow when she emerged from her dorm, scarved, and wandered over. Her carefully combed golden hair looked like a lightbulb emerging from the pure white scarf.

“I left my phone charger in south,” she said.

“I’ll walk there with you,” I smiled. So we walked, up the stairs and over the ice and across the road and down into the basement and through the door and grabbed her phone charger. And we walked back through the door and up out of the basement and across the road and over the ice and down the stairs and up the elevator and into her dorm. It was warm, with thick white painted concrete walls. One wall was covered in sticky notes with quotes from the suite mates.

“No, you’re saying it wrong. The sound is more at the back of the throat” – Jen, on the pronunciation of the word “cock”

“Blue was a girl,” – Jen “Magenta was a boy,” – Shwacka “and periwinkle the cat was an abomination” – Tom

Her room was tidy, with a fuzzy black carpet and a few of her pencil sketches taped to the wall. In one sketch, a portrait, the left half of a girl’s face was exposed a skeleton, while the right half smiled subtly. The Bachelor was on in the living room. Two of her suite mates were watching it. She collapsed on the couch, then got up, changed into some sort of shorts (which looked kinda like underwear) and came back out. Her hips were on full display, but I assumed this was normal. I followed the curve of her leg from hip to toe. It was elegant, like a cosine, but more human than a graph, more real. And then she burped loudly in a German accent.

“I’m going to bed,” she said. I nodded and put on my coat. As I wandered out the door and closed it behind me, I realized I should’ve hugged her goodbye.

Damn it.