D-pression

I recall once meeting my friend Pedro in the streets of Funchal, and asking him about our common experience of being people from Madeira studying in Lisbon. This was perhaps during our second or third year in Lisbon, and at some point there was this very embarrassing moment in the conversation (embarrassing for me of course) where I assumed a negative experience as common ground which was not common at all!

So there I was, talking about our first year in Lisbon, and how depression had taken over us during a significant part of that year, to which he quite sensibly remarked that we must have had some sort of misunderstanding there since he didn't identify himself with that feeling in any way. Oh boy, was it an awkward moment in the conversation one had to withstand! And the worst thing is that it wasn't even a him versus me kind of attitude, it was just him very objectively neglecting a sentiment I had foolishly assumed common. How much more stupid could I look?

But I guess that unfortunate episode was mainly due to my mistaking Pedro for some other boy from Madeira I must have talked to who had confessed that same depressiveness and unease following the Fx-Lx relocation. That was a very very down year for me. I practically lost all ties to my friends, wasn't able to make new friendships or even to mate, and then I found myself staying more and more at home just pretending I was doing something. I'd spend two hours lining up two or three poetry books I had in some horrible wood shelves. Or just trying to arrange the dishes in the kitchen up to some infinitesimal symmetry. Yeah, I know there's a name for that. Thank God there is because it made me feel better.

Well, it was definitely painful going through that 18's depression. But going through the 28's depression wasn't any better actually. When you get to a state where you just start thinking about all the possible ways you get can annihilated, like being run over by a car or just dying in a plane accident. And then it all converges to the suicidal. You obviously ask yourself what the hell you're doing with your life, and whether that's all you can expect from it. You start to see the flaws in every little thing, every little act that's partaken by you and in front of you, and you just want to lie down forever, and you actually go and lie down under a table or something, you lie to yourself, to think of some miraculous time travel which can take you back to when you were 13 and then you'll be able to start all over again, to do everything right, yeah, you'll be the Cristiano Ronaldo of whatever it is you want to do.

How fu**ed-up can that be.