(The title of this post is adapted from a line in “Act Of Faythe” by Dream Theater. I’m going to try to be more diligent in crediting the musicians who inspire me.)
It doesn’t take much to trigger depression, to send a person who suffers from it down into the depths. Sometimes all it takes is the slightest thing, a casual remark uttered where he can hear. Just some little comment that gets misinterpreted, gets filtered through this dark lens I’m forced to use to look at the world, and I’m in the dumps again.
It works even better when you throw it in my face.
I love my family. I’ve said that so many times, and I’ve often wondered if I write it so much because I need to be reminded. But I really do. I love them with all my heart. I wouldn’t be here without them, and I mean that in a very literal sense: besides the obvious “my mother gave birth to me” stuff, I would have killed myself long ago without the support I receive from my close relations.
That said, they make mistakes. Nobody’s perfect, after all. In the past year, they’ve grown more accustomed to my mental state, and I’ve tried to work with them to help them understand what it does to me. That’s good. For too long, I felt like I couldn’t talk to anybody about it, as even my own mother would say, “What do you have to be depressed about?” If I said something to my aunt, she’d always counter, “Imagine if you lost your son.” My brother? “So am I.”
Now, it’s better, if only because all their fortunes have gotten worse to match mine. And that, I think, is what made yesterday’s triggering event so…powerful. My mom and I were talking. I’d just ordered pizza for dinner, and we were waiting on the delivery. For no reason I can fathom, she started browsing Facebook (she’s become quite the social media fanatic since last May), and she showed me a picture.
My half-sister. At her wedding.
I’ve told the story before, but I’ll recap. My father left when I was 12. (That’s 1995, for those keeping score at home.) He was having an affair with his secretary, and they got married the week his divorce was finalized. The first baby, a girl, was born in 1998. She’ll be 23 this summer. Twenty-three years old. The last time I saw her in person, she wasn’t old enough to walk! (For the record, she has a younger sibling. I’ve never actually met my half-brother, and he was born in 2001.)
Something about that just hurt on the deepest level. Here I am at age 37, driving myself into near-suicidal insanity in an attempt to make even the smallest step toward a life of my own, and the little baby from that weekend vacation in ’99 is not only grown, but married.
I made some mumbles of acknowledgment when my mom was swiping through the pictures. Somehow, she didn’t notice the tone of my voice growing dull and lifeless, or the way I quickly turned my head so I wouldn’t have to see yet another yardstick for my failure. No, she kept on going, looking through Little Sister’s friends list.
Did you know that my cousin, who (I think?) is also 37, is a mother of two? I certainly didn’t. You tend not to hear about these things when you don’t talk to certain people for literal decades. Her sister, about five years younger, has a child of her own, apparently. Their brother in the middle? No idea. I got tired of the pictures and had to excuse myself, because I was already on the verge of tears.
I’ve never met any of my once-removed cousins on my father’s side. I don’t know their names; they may not even know I exist. That doesn’t trouble me as much as it probably should. We all have some relatives we don’t see often enough. Mine just happen to be very close on the family tree.
What bothered me was the comparison. My mom didn’t mean to do that. I don’t blame her for it. I am upset that she seemed oblivious to the pain she was causing me, but it was my own mind that made something painful out of what should have been fun and lighthearted.
Still, it hurt to be reminded of what I don’t have. What I sometimes believe I’ll never have. Because…this world isn’t getting any better, and I’m not getting any younger. I’ve been denied for so long, and maybe it’s pity or envy talking, but it just isn’t fair. It really isn’t.
I try. I try every day to be better. I’ve written dozens of novels. I’ve created a few applications and websites. I instinctively grasp things most people don’t even try to comprehend. Those who know me best all agree that I’m good at what I do.
But does that really matter? In the end, does it matter how good you are, if you never have the chance to prove it? Connections count for more than experience when it comes to job hunting, and I have no connections. The easiest way to make money is to inherit it, but that’s hard to do when the man who was supposed to provide the inheritance ran off to spend it on the woman he thought was more worthy. My only marketable skills are in overcrowded fields, I can’t open a business of my own when nobody’s allowed to open a business at all, and that doesn’t even begin to get into the other blocking factors.
I know what I want: I want to be a husband and a father. Part of that comes from a competitive drive to outdo my own father, to prove that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes he did. Part of it comes from my personal belief in bionatalism, the idea that my primary purpose is to reproduce and thus further not only the species, by my own genetic lineage. And the largest portion of it comes from the simple fact that I have someone with whom I could make it all happen. Best of all, she genuinely wants the feminine counterpart to that life. With me.
I don’t think I’m more deserving than, say, my half-sister or cousins. My low self-esteem won’t let me think that. I do think I deserve a chance. We all do, and I’m still waiting on mine.
I’m just tired of waiting.