“I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.”
Here is a short little story that popped into my head. Depression and shame are things that I always struggle to put into words. Here is one attempt.
It wasn’t a glamorous sport. It wasn’t like basketball or soccer or football. There weren’t those incredible feats of sheer, raw athletic prowess. Players didn’t walk off the field drenched in sweat with trembling muscles fatigued beyond the point that normal humans could understand.
Instead, the athletes spent the vast majority of the time on the field standing without moving, waiting for another person, somewhere else, to do something. For a culture that was so heavily and obsessively in love with violence and endorsed sports that thrived on people punching each other in the face, the fact that softball’s male equivalent was known as America’s past time had always eluded Olivia. Yet, as she stood with her chin resting on the top of the chain link fence, squinting against the sun, she finally understood.
As she watched Rachel standing on first base, glove in hand, waiting for her pitcher to begin her motion, Olivia figured it out. Rachel was completely in her element. Olivia didn’t have to ask her friend later to know that she did not see, hear, smell, or breath anything else in that moment. It was simply softball.
It was the expression on a world class cellist’s face when they played for an audience. It didn’t matter if the audience was there or not because all that mattered was the music and the sensation against their fingertips. It was the way a genius mathematician would stand writing on a chalk board for hour after hour after hour, as the sun set and then rose again, never even stopping to eat, transfixed by the problem they could not get off of their brain.
As Rachel’s prepared to potentially field the ball or when she stood to bat, she too existed on that same plane of existence. Olivia had never found herself filled by such strong feelings of admiration and complete and utter jealousy. The two feelings waged inside of her, battling for supremacy, but regardless of the victor or the inevitable prolonged agony of a duel, she could not tear her eyes off of the girl.
When they lay in bed that night, she made Rachel tell her everything. She made her relive every moment of the game. She made her friend close her eyes and recount everything. Then, Olivia would just gaze into her face. In those moments, that lasted only a few precious seconds, before Rachel would start laughing from the ludicrousness of it all, in those moments, Olivia found life, in its purest sense.
In those moments, tears would finally slip down her cheeks. The same tears that she never let fall from sadness or grief or fear. She would let fall for this.
Of course, Rachel did not understand this distinction and when her eyes opened and she saw the tears, softball disappeared and she was back on the normal plane, trying to comfort her friend. Olivia envied her. Rachel wasn’t aware of the struggle.
She didn’t understand that every second was a fight, a bloody vicious no holds barred battle to live. She wasn’t aware. So, she didn’t even fight. So, how was it fair that she still managed to emerge victorious in this war every time she stepped on the field while Olivia slaved every day with only the agonizing, hopeless voice in the back of her mind constantly reminding her of her failure with the pain of a kick to the insides of her skull.
The tears stopped falling. There was no more beautiful pain. Only despair.
Then, all thoughts would be cut off as Rachel’s lips would press against her face again and again, while in-between murmuring words of comfort. In that moment, something inside of her would snap.  It was too much.
She felt it now. Even now, Rachel was alive. She could feel it radiating out of her friend, the complete peace that came with being completely alive. Olivia realized it had nothing to do with any sport or problem or focus or anything. Rachel wasn’t lucky to be living in ignorance of the struggle. She wasn’t in ignorance. She had no struggle because she had emerged victorious. She had achieved the goal of any war: peace.
In that moment, Olivia finally saw clearly what she had always known to be true that everyone else’s souls were existing on a higher plane, the normal plane, and it was only her, here, down below, not in the fire of hell, but the icy frozen cold of non-existence. Alone. Standing up, without a word, she left the room, knowing she would never return.
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