Back when I was in college I lived in a house for a while with about six or seven other female roommates and there’s one roommate I’ve been thinking about lately. I didn’t know her very well, I don’t think I even remembe her name, because I moved into the house when I got back from the France Exchange Program in the middle of the year. She was always depressed and very unhappy. She spent a lot of time lying around the living room eating strange snacks like sugar free jello mixed with air-popped popcorn. I had missed the drama (if there was one) that had led up to this ennui. Was it a break-up? Or just existential angst? I didn’t feel it was polite to ask for the back story or ask her to share the couch.
Anyway one evening, this roommate was feeling particularly bad and was crying and weepy. She had written a letter to one of her professors, a person who it appears she considered a role model or perhaps a father figure, trying to excuse and explain why she hadn’t completed an assignment and didn’t have it to turn in on the due date. In the letter, she told him in detail how depressed she was, using a lot of metaphors to describe her depression, and basically pouring her heart out about how she bad she was feeling about herself.
She had gotten back the professor’s response to her letter on the evening in question. It was not very nice. He basically said to her your confession and self-excoriation is tedious and not very interesting to read. As if her letter were a literary essay and he was grading her. I guess he was trying to keep his distance and maybe he was used to adolescents having extreme moments and didn’t really want to get involved? I don’t know. But it seemed cruel to me. He could have given her a little pep talk, told her that many people find the early twenties to be a difficult time and counseling can be very helpful and some such palaver. Or just told her to take extra time until she was feeling better to turn in the assignment, if he didn’t want to get particularly involved. She dropped out of school a few weeks after this incident and I always thought, what a waste. What a sad outcome when a few kind words might have been so helpful.
When I was thinking about this yesterday, I kept turning it around and looking at it from both angles. People could probably find my writing about Sarah’s death, and about my depression and guilt and self-excoriation tedious and uninteresting. But maybe I’m the one who just needs a little pep talk, someone to say that the end of the first year of grieving is a difficult time, and I should take all the time I need to feel better. I do want to feel better.
The First Year Without Sarah 