Between Two Eternities || Travis Hamonic

(6) Lost Souls and Mutineers

"Sadness is more or less like a head cold...with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer."

-Barbara Kingslover, The Bean Trees

The thing to make you feel the most insignificant and your problems trivial, is when people are ignorant about your issues. I am not a stranger to the expression "post concert depression." I had never been to a concert so I wouldn't know, but I highly doubt that you get depressed after one. You can't just "get depressed," especially after one night. It's gradual.

I reckon that's why no one really takes it seriously. Because people don't recognize slowness; they can't see that anything is wrong. No one gets it except those who have it. Or had it. They're the only ones that understand. To everyone else, people with depression are just crazy in a made up world of dark.

But saying you had depression doesn't mean anything has changed much. The demons are always there. The nefarious world still exists. My own pernicious mind won't ever escape from itself.

With the way my life has been changed so dramatically, Jeremy says it wouldn't be a surprise if I had developed some kind of depression. But I hadn't as far as he knows. I'm a lot better than I was a few years ago, when I first came to him, but it'll always be there.

The sadness isn't depression. But that doesn't mean I don't hurt. And when I'm completely consumed by it, I seek the most oblivionated book. Something to distract and submerse my curled up mind.

Getting over it is the saddest part. The fear of having to reinsert myself into the world, like it never happened. Like limbo. I don't see an end. Oh how that pains me! There must be an end somewhere!

When I finish the book, and have to wake up again.

And what is the beginning? Is it birth? Or first steps? Word? What. What is it? Stuck. That's what it feels like. That's what I feel like. Stuck between two unknowns. Two forevers.

If someone told me that they had post hockey game depression, I would've laughed in their face. Or just roll my eyes.

But now that I see it, I think it's possible. Not depression in it's entirety of course. More like the sadness, but depression sounds more serious.

I have a new acute sense to anything hockey (on tv, the internet, newspapers, magazines ...), especially for number 3 of the New York Islanders. I don't go looking, but I don't avoid it by any means.

Matt woke up every morning and checked the mailbox, hoping for another letter from the Islanders. Hoping for those tickets that Travis promised him.

After the seventh day, he seemed to have given up all hope (what a terrible thing!). He moped around all day, usually just staring at the signed puck. Or jersey. He wore that sucker to bed every night. And wore it to school at least twice every week. Even after he had ceased to chase the mailman.

I wouldn't say I was expecting to see that letter, but I was disappointed when it didn't come. Disappointed for Matt. And maybe for myself, maybe. And I was angry at Travis. I don't even know him.

Beautiful boys have a way of breaking hearts.

He promised that he would get Matt to another game. He promised Matt. He promised ...

Aunt Molly tried to console Matt, but it didn't work. He was too upset. Just seeing his glum face everyday after the mail came made me even more upset with Travis, with that beautiful hockey player who promised.

But what was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to do except leave Matt alone because I know that's all he wanted, to be left alone. He was a lot more like me than he thought.