I Am Not Him

Dingy, gray snow lines the freeway on the repetitious drive to campus. My window is cracked to allow the smoke from my cigarette to escape; escape into the frigid emptiness of the black and white photograph framed by the car windows. The cold air penetrates the warmth inside here, inside me. It feels real; blowing against my forehead in an unbreakable show of defiance. I am done with the cigarette, but the window stays open. I want to shut my eyes and let that air beat against my forehead, colder and colder, until I can no longer feel its indifference.

The campus parking lot is rapidly filling with sleepy students. They arrive with the intention of building their future, of climbing the ladder to successful careers, meeting their future husbands and wives on the grounds of this institution. But I am here because it is expected of me; high school then college, college then career, career then family, family then the white picket fence. But I cannot see beyond today, and today is dark.

The radio plays in the solitude of my car. I keep it on for the noise, to distract my mind from itself. Staring blankly into the photograph, I hear the word “depression” come into my space. I turn and look at the source of this piercing word: the radio. The DJ is interviewing a mental health professional. Staring at the digital radio dial on the dashboard, I narrow my eyes to focus on the words invading my loneliness.

He asks, “What are the symptoms of depression we should look for?”

She responds, “There is actually a list of symptoms used to help diagnose depression. If you, or someone you know, identifies with even half of these symptoms then we recommend you speak with a professional immediately.” She starts running down the list of symptoms: feelings of helplessness or worthlessness, feelings of guilt or hopelessness, persistent sad or empty mood, loss of interest in activities once enjoyed, decreased energy, fatigue, difficulty concentrating and making decisions, insomnia or oversleeping, weight loss or weight gain, thoughts of death or suicide.

Recognizing that I have all of these symptoms, I quickly reach for the volume knob and turn it all the way left.

Silence.

Thoughts of my granddad scream to the forefront of my mind; his behavior, his introversion, his distraction, inattentiveness, incessant sleep, his death. After my granddad killed himself, my father told me he had been manic depressive all his life. Upon hearing those symptoms, his life made sense to me. I was just a kid the last time I saw him, in that place, that hospital.

* * * * *

Rolling green hills spread across the front of an otherwise plain, one-story brown building. Paved paths lazily meander up and down the hills. People leisurely stroll along the paths, casually conversing on this sunny fall afternoon. Pine trees are clustered together in tiny forests along the paths, with family picnic tables dispersed throughout. Tiny colorful flowers grace patches of earth along the winding paths. A harmonious scene by any standard.

My family and I enter a large crowded waiting room, where children are running rampant, babies are crying, and adults sit expressionless. Bare cinder block walls painted a dull beige surround this mass of waiting people, of which I am now a part of. Halogen tube lights hum and flicker above the muffled voices and crying babies. My grandmother, my Nena, scans the surface of the sea of people, looking for a void to fill. She has done this before. We follow her to an empty space of brown cloth-covered wooden chairs. The people we walk in front of have to move their legs to let us by.

Our wait is not long. My granddad emerges from a thick brown door painted to look like wood. I’ve watched people come in and out of this door; it closes heavy like steel. The latch forcefully clicks when it has shut completely. I get a brief glance behind the door; more beige and more flickering lights down a long corridor with no end. Hospital beds and wheelchairs line the walls.

An orderly dressed in all white holds the heavy door open. He calls my granddad “Wayne,” a name I am not used to hearing. My granddad appears to have just woken up, and he shuffles his feet along the beige linoleum tiled floor as he approaches us. He is wearing the brown leather slippers he has always worn. His gray and brown hair is matted and sticking up in the back. His pajamas are too big; his pants are sagging in the back. Behind his silver-framed glasses are hollow eyes; he does not look at me. My face reflects my fright and confusion; I do not understand this place, or this man, this stranger.

Nena stands tall and solid as this damaged man advances toward her. Her purse is hanging from her elbow, her sweater draped over the other arm. Nothing is out of place. She rubs my granddad on the back, calling him “Dad.” There is no worry in her voice or her face, just defiance.

My mom and dad cautiously embrace my granddad. Words are exchanged but I cannot hear them. Unlike Nena, my dad’s face is sagging in worry as his eyes look for a reflection of life from his father. Both men’s shoulders are slumped when they step away from their embrace. My granddad disappears behind the brown door after only minutes beyond it. The latch clicks locked, and he is gone.

* * * * *

Defeated, I slam my hands into the steering wheel and tightly wrap my fingers around the gray vinyl. I do not want to be like him. The steering wheel is cold on my bare skin, but I strengthen my grip. I cannot be like him. My hands are beginning to turn red, my knuckles turning ghostly white. I am not him. My head drops low against my chest, and my eyes shut burning tight.

I am not him.

A bleak night from the summer enters my mind.

* * * * *

The house is empty and dark, and I am alone, as vacant as this house. I am lying on the floor in my room beneath a forest of icy shadows. The shadows are big, bigger than me, reaching up the heights of the walls and peering down over me, threatening to swallow me whole.

A candle casts a dim orange hue on my notebook. Black ink spills forth like blood from a slashed artery. I write to get it out, to release whatever is trapped inside me; a pain that is only now surfacing, but is leaving me drowning in my own hollow tears. New tear drops soak into warped circles on paper lit only by a single burning flame. The ink obscures with tiny black branches, spreading further and sinking deeper into the pages. The ink and the tears are now permanent.

It is summer, but I feel cold. The air conditioner kicks on in the background. It comes on whenever it feels like it, never just to comfort me. The only other sound filling the empty silence is the scratch of pen on paper; furious at times, slow and deliberate at others.

Tonight, my crying is outwardly silent, but internally deafening. There are no moments of heavy weeping, or tears streaming in rivers down my face, or the seizure like breathing of cataclysmic woe. Just the heft of the world hanging from a string tied to my heart.

Sleep either comes too much, or never at all, and tonight it has abandoned me. To sleep is to not be awake, and being awake is inherently painful. My mind will become quiet, my eyes will dry, and my body will relax. But tonight my thoughts are heavier than my tired and burning eyes. I do not want to be here in this room, in this house, this city, this planet, in this skin.

* * * * *

Sitting in my car with that memory, my eyes fill with tears as I realize the darkness of that night. Deciding I cannot be here right now, my right hand releases its grip on the steering wheel and reaches for the gear shift. Locking it into Drive I pull out of the parking lot. The cigarette lighter pops out, ready to light my cigarette at the first stoplight.

Pulling onto the freeway, my left hand holds the cigarette by the open window and my right hand rests on top of the steering wheel. My destination is the far left lane, the fast lane. Gradually my right foot reaches the floor, the accelerator pinned beneath it. The wind rushes in through the cracked window, so loud and harsh I squeeze my eyes together and sink deeper into my seat. The orange hand on the speedometer reads eighty, ninety, ninety-five, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one-hundred. My heart drums hard against my ribcage, more thunderous than the wind blasting into the car. Dark shapes stand still as I race past them. The black and white photograph is blurring into streaking gray. I exhale deeply and release my foot from the accelerator. I am not him.

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