Prozac Nation

Sometimes it feels like we're all living in a Prozac nation. The United States of Depression.

I was so scared to give up depression, fearing that somehow the worst part of me was actually all of me.

That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.

I wasn’t just the madwoman in the attic—I was the attic itself.

Ever since my father had left, he and I had these twice-a-year reconciliations, kind of the way department stores have semiannual sales: Crowds flock to them expectantly, only to find that what remains once they arrive is all just junk anyway.

“All I ever wanted was for you and everybody to love me just the way I am,” I whisper into her fur collar, not caring if she doesn’t hear, I don’t know why I’m talking anymore anyway. “But now I just hate everybody. I don’t care about anyone else because I’m so hateful.”
“Oh, Ellie, I know,” my mother says. “I know. And I’m so sorry.”

I am all too aware that as I sit talking to my mother, I am beginning to sound like a Hollywood cliché, and yet I know that a lot of stock characters are built on some real truths. I know that sometimes the personal is political, that people who could make the world a better place end up adding to its destruction because they are fucked up, they’re from bad homes.

Noah is next to me on the floor, we are wrapped in each other the way dried, harried flowers stick together after a week in a vase.