The Cruel Joke

  Once upon a time a girl woke up to find herself in a deep, dark pit.  It was so deep she couldn’t see even a glimmer of sky shining at the top of the pit.  No one seemed able to see the girl in the pit, yet she could hear them talking.  They said things to her:  “Why don’t you climb out of that pit instead of wallowing down there in self-pity?  I was in a pit once, but I just picked myself up and climbed right on out.”  She tried to climb out, but she couldn’t find any footholds; every time she made any progress up the walls of the pit, she’d suddenly slide back down and the floor of the pit would drop even deeper, if that were possible.  She grew more and more miserable in the pit and it was hard to remember a time she hadn’t lived there.  Occasionally someone would pass by and yell down at her, “What have you got to be miserable about?  I’d count my blessings if I were you instead of moaning about what you don’t have.” 

          One day the girl looked up and saw something light at the top of the pit.  Every day it grew larger until she finally recognized it as sky.  The floor of the pit had miraculously risen to the point that she could climb out.  She felt so much better to be out of that hole.  But soon thereafter, a doctor told her she was sick and began cutting off parts of her body and giving her poisons to kill whatever was making her sick.  The girl really didn’t mind at all, because compared to being in the pit, these were happy golden days.  Nobody said, “Everybody gets sick—get over it!”  To the contrary, people were kind and loving.  They asked how she was doing and didn’t appear to expect her to get better all on her own.  No one told her if she died it would be incredibly selfish of her.  The girl got better and was glad all that was behind her. 

But the day came when the girl looked around and noticed all her furniture had been moved back into the pit.  At first she could get out, but gradually the floor of the pit sank lower and lower until once more  she was stuck at the bottom of a deep pit with no way to climb out.  She would rather be dead than be back in this pit with no way out again.  How she regretted having survived the illness!  She would never have cooperated in being cut on and poisoned just so she could go back to living in a horribly dark and lonely pit.  She felt it was most unfair.  Years went by and the girl hoped maybe she’d get sick again and this time she’d know better than to seek any treatment to get well.  Yet she remained disgustingly healthy.  It was a cruel joke.

I had breast cancer in 1995 and went through a mastectomy and chemotherapy.  From about 1994 until about 2003 I was on medication that kept me from being suicidal and gave me enough strength to handle the depression.  Often anti-depressants work for a while but then stop.  It makes me compare all the stuff in my brain to cockroaches--always mutating to adjust to new poisons so they can keep scurrying around in the dark recesses of my mind.