Prozac Nation (36 page)

So Noah explains to the store clerk that I'm having one of my turns, and ushers me out the door, looking mortified.

That night, we are scheduled to go to the theater, and Noah says, Would it be too much to ask you to put on something nice, to make yourself look pretty before we go out on the town? As if this is some society formal. I don't know how to say that we don't know anyone and nobody cares anyway. Still, feeling a little bad about the scene earlier in the day, I put on a black silk skirt and a white silk top with a pearl necklace, and this pleases Noah so much I almost want to change clothes, almost want to put on my ripped jeans and black turtleneck. I've come to resent him so completely for keeping me here in London, for being the one with the money, that I want to do everything I can to annoy him. But the one thing I can't seem to do is get on a goddamn plane and go home. I keep acting like he's imprisoning me when I ought to realize that I'm my own worst jailer.

 

When we get to Stonehenge the next day, the sun is already setting and Noah thinks it would be really cool to get stoned there while the orange and pink and purple sky shines upon us. Since he let me play Springsteen on the tape deck during the entire drive, I figure I better go along with this. But when we get outside it is windy and cold, and I think to myself, this is so high school, the kind of thing you do with some guy who has a customized van that he drives all around the country in pursuit of Grateful Dead concerts and bootleg tapes. But then, how would I know? I never did stuff like this in high school. And I wasn't going to start now.

 

Later, in Oxford, we meet a couple who end up telling us that they are Jewish and are planning to go to Israel for Passover. I ask them if they will leave a note for me in the Kotel, in the cracks between bricks of the Wailing Wall, because I was always taught that God answers all prayers that are deposited at that hallowed site. All I can think to write, in a childish scrawl on a little piece of paper, is, Dear God, Please send me a miracle that gets me out of this depression because I can't go on this way.

Noah, feeling ecumenical, scribbles something down too. He's probably just asking for a Mercedes for graduation, but maybe I'm wrong.

 

When we happen to pass through a town called Ipswich, I actually get a bit excited because I figure we can get some Ipswich clams, really fresh and raw, better than the kind they have at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central. So we drive here and we drive there, stopping, asking everyone we see where there's a clam bar, but no one seems to have any idea what we're speaking of, no one has ever eaten a clam. Eventually we realize that it's Ipswich, Massachusetts, where the clams come from. As usual, England has nothing to offer me.

 

Somewhere on the road, after we've been all over England, after I've cried and ranted and collapsed in Bath and Avon and the Cotswolds and Brighton, as we were heading back to London for a couple of more days before returning home, Noah says to me, “How can you be tired of London? Samuel Johnson said that anyone who is bored with London is bored with life.”

“Noah,” I answer, “I think you're finally catching on.”

 

As we pull into London, to return to the Savoy before leaving the country, we find ourselves lost in Piccadilly Circus, driving in circles through all the rotaries and one-way streets that make up this central part of the city. This goes on for a while, a half hour at least, and finally I beg Noah to ask someone for directions. I know that men are notorious for refusing to succumb to this simple solution to a simple but rather vexing problem, but still I believe that after all this time Noah will consent to pull over and get help from a passing stranger.

But no. He keeps talking about how finding our way back to the hotel without anyone else's aid will be an adventure, an experience. And this seems so typical of him. I can't imagine what it's like to have a life that is so carefree and easy that the things that most people consider extremely annoying—like getting lost—become some kind of fun diversion. Leave it to Noah in all his ease and luxury to find delight in the annoying. And of course, there is a lot about Noah himself that is very annoying. Aside from all the little tics and mannerisms that perfectly disgust me, Noah could be rightly faulted for
just not getting
the many nuances in human character. He is, no question, not terribly sensitive or perceptive. But he certainly does know how to travel in style. He even knows how to get lost with real grace. And what, after all, is traveling of any kind except consciously getting lost in the world? Wasn't the whole idea in coming to London that I might just lose enough of myself to find a new, more palatable version? If I can't mellow out and go with the flow of traffic and rain in Piccadilly Circus at a point in my life when there is absolutely nothing at all pressing at me and demanding that I get back to it, then what is there left for me to do?

And I know, know for sure, with an absolute certainty, that
this is rock bottom,
this is what the worst possible thing feels like. It is not some grand, wretched emotional breakdown. It is, in fact, so very mundane: Rock bottom is an inability to endure being lost in Piccadilly Circus. Rock bottom is an inability to cope with the commonplace that is so extreme it makes even the grandest and loveliest things unbearable. There is much more to Noah than his refusal to get directions to the Savoy. The guy is an epicure, a man
who delights in life, and all he has wanted to do for me in England is share in his good fortune and taste. It is simply amazing to him that all my sorrow cannot be cured by a BMW. And, of course, his inability to calculate how
much worse off I am—his inability to understand me or my depression—is a flaw that makes it impossible for me see his virtues. It is impossible for me to see that what he is doing for me without understanding me is almost kinder than what someone might do who does understand: Noah is giving me his care unconditionally, not because my troubles make sense to him, but because he likes me just the same. His feelings for me are positively parental. He is nice to me because he believes there is something good about me even though all evidence is to the contrary. Everything is paid for, everything is taken care of, we have even had separate beds in most of the charming little inns that we've stayed in along the countryside. Noah is trying to give me this precious gift, this offering of his version of happiness, because that is the best he can do for me. And none of his generosity ever seems nearly as important to me the fact that, for God-fucking-sake, he refuses to pull over and get instructions when we are lost in Piccadilly Circus.

Rock bottom is feeling like the only thing that matters in all of life is the one bad moment. Rock bottom is my screaming at Noah,
Goddamnit, maybe this is your idea of a good time, but I'm exhausted, I'm depressed, I am only getting out of this country alive because suicide in London would truly be redundant, and if you don't get us some directions, I will strangle you to death!

Rock bottom is everything out of focus. It's a failure of vision, a failure to see the world as it is, to see the good in what it is, and only to wonder why the hell things look the way they do and not—and not some other way As if there were any way that might look right from behind that depressive fog. It's not as if I hadn't tried to make things work with a man who was nothing like Noah. I mean, Rafe was always overwhelmed with desire to feel my pain with me, he was boyfriend-as-therapist. Still, I felt about as bad with Rafe as I did with Noah, and this sad discovery makes me see what a fresh hell I have landed in. No man is going to solve my problems, no one can rescue me, because I am too sick. Years ago, many many moons ago, back in high school or may be even earlier, there was a chance that solid love might have penetrated the fumes of my mind and made me feel just a little bit all right. But by the time I got to England, it was too late.

13

I know the bottom, she says. I

   know it with my great tap root:

It is what you fear.

I do not fear it: I have been there.

 

SYLVIA PLATH

“Elm”

 

Even under the best of circumstances, it is never pleasant to return home from travel after dark. The estranged familiarity of the place you left behind is so much harder to absorb without light. As I walk in the door of my Cambridge apartment, I get the feeling that the sofa, still covered in white sheets as if at a wake, is going to consume me. The chairs, too, seem predatory. The wildly surreal prints I chose for the living room walls, the Magritte eye and umbrella and hat, all look like demons that might come to life. Without realizing it, I seem to have decorated this place like the set of a film collaboration between Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel. I keep waiting for the clocks to melt, for the furniture to anthropomorphize Of course my own bedroom is eeriest of all the black leaf curtain I had once found
so
beautiful now seems just plain funereal.

I am supposed to pack up a bag to take with me to Stillman—toiletries, clothes, necessaries—but what's the point? There's nothing I want, nothing I can use. As far as I can tell, the sweatpants and pajama top I have had on since I got back from England will never be peeled off of my body again. I have to remember to leave a note telling them that this is what I want to wear in my coffin, this is my ten-feet-under attire. Because I'll have no occasion to change my outfit from this day forward: Bathing seems like an exercise in futility, like making my bed or brushing my teeth or combing my hair. Clean the slate, then let it get sullied once more. Wipe it down, and wait for more filth. This inevitable pattern of progress and regress, which is really what life is all about, is too absurd for me to continue. The moment in
The Bell Jar
when Esther Greenwood realizes after thirty days in the same black turtleneck that she never wants to wash her hair again, that the repeated necessity of the act is too much trouble, that she wants to do it once and be done with it, seems like the book's true epiphany. You know you've completely descended into madness when the matter of shampoo has ascended to philosophical heights. So as far as I'm concerned, the last shower I took is the last shower I will ever take.

Whatever remnant of will I once had to get better has slipped away, drowned in the Atlantic Ocean while I flew overhead. For the longest time, my depression seemed wrong, it seemed like an outer appendage, a bothersome spare limb that was tacked onto a life that should have been happy. But I don't believe that anymore. I believe it is right and good that I should be so low. I believe that the nature of life—even normal, sane, not-depressed life—has worn me down, and it will wear me down some more. It is just a fact that if I am to grow up, eventually get married, and have kids, and do all those happy things, along the way I will have so much trial and error to go through, so much living that I can anticipate only with dread. There will be so many more Rafes, so many more heartbreakers, so many more cycles of elation at the first kiss, and devastation when it's over. I accept this pattern of relationships as a perfectly decent way for people to make their way through the mating game—but I can't handle it. I am so wrecked already, so unstable, a piece of work who was never given the tools it takes to deal with what everyone else considers business as usual. I am not equipped with any emotional resilience, can't go with the flow, can't stand steady while the boat rocks and rolls. Once, so long ago, I had it in me, but now it's too late. Years of depression have robbed me of that—well, that
give,
that elasticity that everyone else calls perspective.

And now I don't even want it anymore. I believe there is an integrity to my intolerance: Why does the rest of the world put up with the hypocrisy, the need to put a happy face on sorrow, the need to keep on keeping on? Why is everyone so willing to be so cool when she unexpectedly crashes trays in the dining hall with a person who only the night before saw her naked and vulnerable, who in the light of day is a stranger, a person who nods hello? Why do people put up with all the indignities that are par for the course in their interpersonal affairs, and then, with equal resilience, go about their public lives, spending so much of their time bumping up against a bureaucracy whose whole purpose is to keep telling you
no!!
I don't know the answer I know only that I can't. I don't want any more of life's vicissitudes I don't want any more of this try try again stuff I just want out I've had it I am so tired I am twenty and I am already exhausted.

The only reason I agree to go to Stillman—besides the fact that a couple of orderlies are scheduled to come here and get me—is that I am too tired to do anything else. It takes energy and will to commit suicide, and I don't have either. Dr. Sterling says she's going to put me on some new drug, but she isn't aware that I've already crossed the line, I've already surrendered to the death urge.
I refuse to get better.
I only hope that whatever pill she gives me makes me feel well enough to plot my own end, to gather the medicines or other methods of destruction in order to make this suicide a success and not just one more wimpy attempt by another hysterical girl who wants help. Because I don't want their fucking help anymore.

 

I have studiously tried to avoid ever using the word
madness
to describe my condition. Now and again, the word slips out, but I hate it.
Madness
is too glamorous a term to convey what happens to most people who are losing their minds. That word is too exciting, too literary, too interesting in its connotations, to convey the boredom, the slowness, the dreariness, the dampness of depression.