This is an excerpt from a memoir I’m currently writing, Thirty Cures in Thirty Years: A Depression Survival Story. It is a lighthearted book about the heavy work of mental health. For updates and availability info, subscribe to the right.
***
When I was in the fifth grade, I checked out the same book every month for the entire school year. Some months I read it little by little during free reading hour, but other months I just kept it in my desk, comforted by its presence and pretending it was mine. When I did read it, I scratched the edges of the pages compulsively—a comforting habit. As I did this, some of the paper would flake off under my fingernails, and I would flick it to the floor, then start scratching again on the next page. By the end of the year, the book was in a sorry state of repair.
The book was called The Bears’ House–Marilyn Sachs was the author–and it was the first great book I ever read. Years later, I discovered that I hadn’t understood the book; clearly, the mother was severely depressed and the children were severely neglected. Sachs’ masterly subtlety and her use of the first person limited point of view meant that she never used those words. Instead, she perfectly captured the loneliness of a child who had no friends and who ran home from school every day at lunchtime to feed her baby sister Kool-aid from a bottle as her mother slept through the child’s cries.
But it didn’t matter that the subtler aspects of the book’s substance escaped me. I didn’t read it because of the plot; I read it because it was sad, and because I liked the main character. Her name was Fran Ellen, and she was always alone, and it didn’t seem strange to her to be that way.
Somehow, that made me feel less strange, too.
By the end of that school year, when I had to turn the book in for the last time, much worse for my having loved it, The Bears’ House was more than a book to me.
It was an education, and a friend.
***
That year, I gave up on going to the playground where my aloneness might draw attention. Did I reject them first, or did they reject me? Maybe it was a little of both. At recess and at lunch, I would wander the halls or apply lip gloss in the girl’s bathroom, killing time by sitting on the white-painted radiator by the obscured-glass window that would have offered a view of the playground and the other kids.
Other times, I would sit on the concrete steps on the side of the school building, around the corner from the schoolyard. They were comfortingly solid and hidden and I don’t remember anyone ever finding me there. And other than a few moments of sudden joy, or satisfaction, or a spontaneous feeling of confidence brought on by some special circumstance, that is who I was back then: the girl sitting on the back steps, alone.
***
One afternoon that year, I returned from recess and joined the line at the drinking fountain. Standing there, waiting my turn, I started crying. No precursor. No inciting incident. I was just … crying. No one in line behind me said anything.
Soon, Natasha walked by. Natasha, my almost-friend–the only person in school I suspected might like me. She was different, too, but in a different way. She was a confident tomboy with an attitude. Seeing my tears that day, she had the decency to stop abruptly and ask me if I was okay.
I appreciated that. Someone noticed. I existed. But when I didn’t respond, she added something to her query: “What’s wrong? Is it … the drinking fountain?”
The drinking fountain? Natasha. Don’t you see that my problem is bigger than that? I’m not a little kid, crying because she’s thirsty and the fountain doesn’t work. I’m suffering here.
I didn’t say any of this to her, though. I didn’t know how to say it, and she wouldn’t have understood. I simply shook my head in defeat, and she walked away. Her comment incited enough shock and embarrassment in me that I was able to suppress my tears, drink some water, and return to the classroom with the rest of the kids.
I went on with my day as if nothing had happened, but something had happened: I’d been confronted with a hard truth. People didn’t feel the way I felt about life. They didn’t see the despair in it all. My perspective wasn’t understood, and I wasn’t, either.
Maybe I never would be. Maybe I was a tragic figure, like people in books. Maybe I was destined by God for suffering.
But that wasn’t all bad, was it? At least I was special. I had depth. That much I knew. I had hoped that Natasha saw it, too, but it seemed she didn’t. “What’s wrong?” she had asked. Didn’t she know that everything was wrong?
The whole world is wrong, Natasha. The other kids. The grownups. The unfairness. The bleakness. The suffering. The drinking fountain, Natasha, had absolutely nothing to do with anything, but if it did, it probably sucked, too.
Natasha doesn’t cry like this, ever, does she? Not ever. Only I feel this way.
Why didn’t a teacher see me cry that day? Or another day–one of the many? Why didn’t they notice I had stopping going to the playground, that I spent every recess hiding in the bathroom or on the side steps? Why didn’t my mom wonder why I never asked to bring a friend home from school?
I will never know.
***
My fifth grade teacher was a kind and insightful one, and looking back I see her efforts towards me were more effective than I then appreciated. She made small talk with me–even confided in me about small things–and tried to make sure I felt included. For group projects, I was placed with the weird kids, including Natasha, and every once in a while I found myself accidentally feeling confident.
For the first few months of the new school year, Natasha and I were buddies. We passed notes during class and occasionally I would even join her on the playground at recess. She and I and another girl, Sandy, knew each other from the year prior, and the other girls in our combined fifth/sixth grade classroom were a year older (our struggling Catholic school had only a handful of students per grade). And so, it seemed natural for us to attach ourselves to each other–at least, it did for a time.
It wasn’t long before the beautiful Sandy was drawn into the older girls’ clique, though. It was hard to watch, but I’d expected it. The leader of the sixth graders was the school’s most popular girl and child model, Freya. She collected admirers. No one was safe. As I made no attempt to ingratiate myself with her (I knew a losing battle when I saw one, and besides, she was an asshole), she went after everyone around me instead.
Now it was just Natasha and I, and I began to wonder how long she’d hold out. We hadn’t experienced the gravitational force that was popularity yet. Could we just ignore it, much like we ignored the boys?
Already imbued with the hubris of religion, I saw the rivalry as good against evil. Which is why it was so hard losing Natasha to the other side.
***
It happened quickly. One day, in the girls’ bathroom, as I sat on the radiator, killing time, Natasha made a dramatic entrance.
“I’ve been looking for you,” she said.
“You have?”
“Yeah. I wanted to play. Have you been in here the whole recess?”
I nodded my head.
Looking for me, I knew, was Natasha’s way of siding with me–at least temporarily. Lately, things had been coming to a head. So rather than joining her, pretending I was okay, I gave expression to what had been on both our minds.
“You can’t go back and forth,” I said with the conviction of the utterly wrong. “You can’t just hang out with them and then me and then them again. You have to choose.”
It was kid logic. So of course, Natasha saw its sense immediately. She agreed to choose, but said she’d have to think about it first.
Towards the end of that day, during a short break between lessons, Natasha came up to me and abruptly said, “Hey, Mollie. I choose you.”
“Really?” I asked.
She nodded, businesslike. I sensed that she had convinced herself it was the right thing to do.
I smiled, and till the end of that day, we were best friends. Then, the next day, Natasha spent recess with Freya and the others.
Later than day, she found me again. With a touch of defiance, she said, “I just wanted to let you know, in case you haven’t already figured it out, that I changed my mind.”
I nodded sadly, but I understood. This was never going to go my way.
I was no fun.
***
With my support system at school pared down to one person–my teacher–I needed additional ways to prop myself up. The good-versus-evil story that had given me legs in my conflict with the popular kids was a great candidate, with handy evidence: these people weren’t even real Christians. I was good, and they clearly were not, and so it was just as well that we didn’t hang out.
I didn’t want to be friends with them, anyway.
“They’re bad influences,” my mom told me. “Don’t cast your pearls before swine.”
It was scripture.
And so, by the time I got to the sixth grade, I wasn’t just a loner.
Now, I was a snob, too.
***
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