I’ve never been good at writing nonfiction pieces. You have to remember things perfectly, and not the way that you wished it would have happened, otherwise you have the story all wrong. I’ve never been good because I always end up twisting something this way or that in my mind, even if I don’t notice it. Sometimes it's been too long for me to notice that I have the story wrong. If you asked me to write about my childhood, I’d only remember a few glimpses - my mother singing me to sleep when I had a nightmare, my grandfather chasing me around the room, but above all, I’d remember the laughter.
But I also remember the sadness. Not the sadness of my childhood, but of my teenage years. I remember those years - and they are always right below all of the laughter, a face that you can only catch a glimpse of. A thing hiding, gone before you can turn to it. An itch just below the surface. I remember when it all started. I can’t tell you what kind of day it was, what I ate for lunch, what was playing on TV when that thing in my mind laughed at me. When that thing in my mind clued the rest of my body in, told all the nerve endings and all ten of my fingers and all ten of my toes that I was depressed.
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I didn’t believe them at first, when the nerves didn’t seem to respond to the commands in my brain. I didn’t believe that I was depressed at first, but then I felt like I couldn’t move my fingers. I felt like there could only be one thought in my brain: I don’t want to live anymore. I felt like there wasn’t enough air, wasn’t enough anything, but above all, that there wasn’t enough laughter in the world.
I failed a test. It wasn’t a test that reflected on my intelligence, but I felt like it did. And as I was awaiting my freshman year of high school, the summer drew long out before me. Each day offered no comfort, no warmth, despite the sunlight that shone in on me. I thought the summer was never going to end - I thought it was going to stretch out endlessly in front of me. I contemplated suicide without ever really thinking about it. It didn’t seem like it could be real. It didn’t seem like a reality I could have, but rather like a peace I could never reach.
Looking back on it now, I realize that it was foolish for me to think this way. But at the time, it seemed like the only way that I could think, because my depression was the only thing firing off in my brain. Simple tasks became harder. Synapses died off. Memories faded into the gray everything.
A part of me faded.
But when I came back, I was more brilliant than anything.
I found myself laughing one day, like it was nothing. I found myself laughing like it was an involuntary action. Like it was more natural than flexing my fingers. More natural than the steady beating of my heart.
I’m not good at writing nonfiction pieces. I find it’s harder to convey my feelings than I originally thought it would be. I always realize that I’ve messed up some of the memories. Not all, though. Because there are the memories of the laughter. The memories of the sadness.
Those I cannot mess up. Those I cannot forget.
