I'm Thinking of Ending Things(15)

“Trying to restore a critical balance,” Jake says. “That’s something we’ve been thinking about at work lately. Critical balance is needed in everything. I was thinking about this in bed the other night. Everything is so . . . delicate. Take something like metabolic alkalosis—a very slight rise in the pH level of tissue, which has to do with a small dip in hydrogen concentration. It’s just . . . it’s all extremely subtle. It’s only one example, and yet it’s vital. There are so many things like this. Everything is impossibly fragile.”

“A lot of things are, yeah,” I say. Like everything I’ve been thinking about.

“Some days, a current runs through me. There’s an energy in me. And you. It’s something worth being aware of. Does this make any sense? Sorry, I’m rambling.”

I have my feet out of my shoes and they’re up, resting on the dashboard in front of me. I’m leaning back in my seat. I feel like I could doze off. It’s the rhythm of the wheels on the road, the movement. Driving has this anesthetic effect on me.

“What do you mean by the current?” I ask, closing my eyes.

“Just how it feels. You and me,” he says. “The singular velocity of flow.”

“HAVE YOU EVER BEEN DEPRESSED or anything?” I ask.

We’ve just made what felt like a significant turn. We’d been on the same road for a while. We turned at a stop sign, not at a light. Left. There are no traffic lights out here.

“Sorry, that was out of the blue. I’m just thinking.”

“About what?”

For years, my life has been flat. I’m not sure how else to describe it. I’ve never admitted it before. I’m not depressed, I don’t think. That’s not what I’m saying. Just flat, listless. So much has felt accidental, unnecessary, arbitrary. It’s been lacking a dimension. Something seems to be missing.

“Sometimes, I feel sad for no apparent reason,” I say. “Does this happen to you?”

“Not particularly, I don’t think,” he says. “I used to worry when I was kid.”

“Worry?”

“Yeah, like I would worry about insignificant things. Some people, strangers, might worry me. I had trouble sleeping. I’d get stomachaches.”

“How old were you then?”

“Young. Maybe eight, nine. When it would get bad, my mom would make what she called ‘kids tea,’ which was pretty much all milk and sugar, and we’d sit and talk.”

“About what?”

“Usually about what I’d been worried about.”

“Do you remember anything specific?”

“I never worried about dying, but I did worry about people in my family dying. Mostly it was abstract fears. For a while I worried one of my limbs might fall off.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, we had sheep at our farm, lambs. A day or two after a lamb was born, Dad would put special rubber bands around its tail. They’re very tight, enough to stop the blood flow. After a few days, the tail would just fall off. It’s not painful for the lambs; they don’t even know what’s happening.

“Every so often, as a kid, I’d be out in the fields and I’d find a severed lamb tail. I started to wonder if the same thing could happen to me. What if the sleeves on a shirt or a pair of socks were slightly too tight? And what if I slept with my socks on and I woke up in the middle of the night and my foot had fallen off? It made me worry, too, about what’s important. Like, why isn’t the tail an important part of the lamb? How much of you can fall off before something important is lost? Right?”

“I can see how that might be unnerving.”

“Sorry. That was a very long answer to your question. So to answer, I would say that no, I’m not depressed.”

“But sad?”

“Sure.”

“Why is that—how is that different?”

“Depression is a serious illness. It’s physically painful, debilitating. And you can’t just decide to get over it in the same way you can’t just decide to get over cancer. Sadness is a normal human condition, no different from happiness. You wouldn’t think of happiness as an illness. Sadness and happiness need each other. To exist, each relies on the other, is what I mean.”

“It seems like more people, if not depressed, are unhappy these days. Would you agree?”

“I’m not sure I’d say that. It does seem like there’s more opportunity to reflect on sadness and feelings of inadequacy, and also a pressure to be happy all the time. Which is impossible.”

“That’s what I mean. We live in a sad time, which doesn’t make sense to me. Why is that? Are there more sad people around now than there used to be?”

“There are many around the university, students and profs whose biggest concern each day—and I’m not exaggerating—is how to burn the proper number of calories for their specific body type based on diet and amount of strenuous exercise. Think about that in the context of human history. Talk about sad.

“There’s something about modernity and what we value now. Our shift in morality. Is there a general lack of compassion? Of interest in others? In connections? It’s all related. How are we supposed to achieve a feeling of significance and purpose without feeling a link to something bigger than our own lives? The more I think about it, the more it seems happiness and fulfillment rely on the presence of others, even just one other. The same way sadness requires happiness, and vice versa. Alone is . . .”