Dr. Li comes in and greets me like always, planting himself on the swivel chair and taking out his ear-inspector thing. He talks fast and moves quickly but nonchalantly. I am always a good kid, an excellent student. I usually breeze through appointments like small chats with distant relatives on Thanksgiving.
“Morgan! How are we doing?”
“Fine.”
“That’s good, that’s good. Open for me?”
I do, and almost wonder if he’ll find something in my throat, a depression hair ball or some marking never before seen in the history of medicine. Some proof.
“All right, everything’s great. Let’s have a look,” he says, gesturing for my A+ quiz.
He looks at it on his clipboard sternly and silently for, like, a full minute. Then he flashes me a big, bright fake grin.
“So, Morgan, why don’t you tell me what’s been going on with you?”
“Um…um,” I stutter aimlessly. “Well, nothing happened. I don’t know why I’m…feeling kind of low lately.”
Dr. Li smiles flatly. “Okay. We’ll see if we can get you feeling more like yourself.”
(But: Myself seems to be the problem.)
He writes me a prescription for a starter dose of Wellbutrin and breaks everything down. Some people, he says, are depressed only once in their lives. Others get depressed sometimes, when they’re triggered. And some people just need to be treated for depression all the time. It’s just a thing they have that doesn’t go away. I’m obviously that one.
If the Wellbutrin doesn’t work, we’ll try Prozac next, or Lexapro, Dr. Li tells me. (I guess there are all these different types of antidepressants and inhibitors?) There will be months and months of trial and error and maybe some serious side effects. I’m told to watch for anxiety attacks, that if they become regular, I will also be prescribed Xanax. I’m told to look out for extreme fatigue, that if it persists, I’ll be prescribed Adderall. I’m picturing myself morphing into a literal medicine cabinet, like the wardrobe from Beauty and the Beast.
“So, you’re seventeen. Gonna be a junior?” he asks casually, shuffling some papers.
“Yup.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Oh, I told the nurse before that I’m not sexually active.” I use air quotes and make it a little comedy routine. Doctors never really laugh at your jokes.
“That’s not what I asked. Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No.” I fold my hands in my lap.
“Hmm.” (Does he not believe me?) “Morgan, let me ask you something. You answered that you lost control one time—”
“I didn’t plan it. I didn’t really want to hurt myself. I just—”
He puts up his hand like a stop sign. I anxiously shift around on the crinkly paper underneath me.
“Was it about a boy?”
My eyes get wide with shock. “No! Nothing like that!”
“It’s just that sometimes it’s common with teenage girls, you know, to have feelings of rejection or low self-esteem. Maybe you’re having trouble fitting in, or you aren’t getting attention from boys….”
I shake my head furiously. “No, I mean, it just sucks being alive sometimes. That’s literally a fact!” (I seriously can’t be the only human in the history of time who acknowledges that existence is not always magnificent.)
“I understand that, I do. Just as long as you know you are a bright and special young woman.”
“Okay. No, I know, I do.”
Jesus Christ. His whole thing is so corny.
(I don’t know what’s pissing me off more: how reductive and antifeminist it was to assume that some dumb boy is causing my depression, or how quickly Dr. Li concluded that I’m basically a boyfriend-less loser. If I didn’t have low self-esteem before, he definitely made sure I wouldn’t go home without it.)
“So, is your brother playing football again this year?”
“Uh, yeah, I think.”
“Good, good. You tell him I say hi. And your parents.”
I nod. “I will.”
“What are you…was it the school newspaper you worked on last year?”
“Um, yearbook, yeah. I’m actually editor this year.”
“Good to hear it. Well, keep up those grades. Still getting As?”
“Yep, all As.”
He stands up to leave and slaps me on the back on his way to the door. “Good girl. See? Life’s not so bad.”
I forget to smile like I’m supposed to. The door slams shut.
You know those commercials for antidepressants with the little cartoon egg that has a gray cloud hanging over it? Or the ones where a lady gazes sadly through a window at all her friends laughing it up in a park?
The list of possible side effects is always so long that the commercials have to include a gratuitous montage of the formerly sad person grinning like crazy in various locations, finally laughing it up in a park.
This is what I mean—nothing is risk-free. No solution is quite perfect, not drugs or religion or even love. There’s always the haunting threat of ending up right back in the dark pit where you started.
That’s what I mean about the bird sweater, about all of it. I want be a formerly sad lady finally laughing it up in various locations, totally chill with wearing the bird sweater, delighted by parks and activities. I wish for it like a child makes a birthday wish—seriously, tightly. But what possible side effects am I risking?
Also, wait a minute, where the fuck is my sticker? Are doctors not doing that anymore?
ANOTHER SUNNY DAY I HATE
It’s another beautiful day that I hate. Off to my certain hell of Rainbow flip-flops and bouncing messy buns, of flabby, sunburned teacher arms in flowered sundresses from 1995. The same cast of characters, shifted very slightly, like tectonic plates. I’m a different person too.
Malcolm rides icily in the passenger’s seat this morning, looking through my CD case like it’s a menu for his last meal on earth. When Malcolm and I are friends, we are best friends. Things are fun and spontaneous around the house; we’re always joking, or sharing music, or watching a Disney Channel Original Movie we sickeningly know every word to. But I killed that entire vibe.
(One of the things I hated most about the night of my “episode” was the look on my brother’s face as he peered from the next room at my breakdown. He looked like he was watching a bullfight. He looked at me like I was a monster, and he hasn’t looked at me the same since.)