The Depression Thread

[Bor the Barbarian Monk]

To put simply, I hurt someones feelings without intending to do so. I apoligized... more times then I can count. But it just keeps naging at me. Then someone brings up the stupid subject again and I'm starting to feel really horible... For something I didn't intend to do.

I have a Bor story that I am ashamed of, but it serves two purposes. One is that it exemplifies the ability to open one's mouth and insert one's foot up to the knee. The other is to show part of the long journey to become who and what I am today.

*When I was fifteen, I met a girl named Tara. She was newly diagnosed as having leukemia. It was also thought that she might be a diabetic on top of it. Well, these were my fields. Conversations with my mother about the combination of both diseases had occurred when I was younger. Having met Tara, this was a time for me to share my mother’s “professional” thoughts on the matter and demonstrate her versions of understanding and love. While talking with Tara, I quite casually told her that anyone with both diseases was doomed. Death was the only thing that awaited the poor soul thus afflicted. Not once did I consider the impact on this girl. I just went on and on, gabbing away as if I was talking about someone who wasn’t even in the room.

I traumatized that poor kid without even realizing it. She required sedation and therapy thanks to me.

What was I thinking when I shared these golden nuggets of information? Nothing. Not a damn thing. She would ask her questions, and I just opened my mouth and did more damage in a few minutes than a lifetime of abuse could…and all through that conversation, not a single brain cell in my head said, “Don’t tell her that, you moron!”

I was restricted to my room after that, and I wasn’t even permitted to talk to my roommate. With few visitors, it became a lonely stay, but a valuable one. It was the first of many lessons that taught me to think before I opened my big mouth. It would take a few more such lessons for me to fine-tune my mouth and brain, getting them to cooperate in a socially acceptable manner.

Tara and I crossed paths many months later. I asked for special permission to see her, to apologize for my previous act of stupidity. After all but dropping to my knees and kissing her feet and begging for forgiveness, she told me that everything was fine between us. She had forgiven me a long time ago. As it turned out, she wasn’t a diabetic.

I was glad. It would have been a terrible loose end to have hanging in my life. Knowing she’d forgiven me became the most important event of my life when she died. Yes, after the hope that remission brings, the leukemia came back and took her brilliantly lighted soul from our mortal realm. I shed many tears over her passing...

The story includes the lesson. Learn it, Masato, and you can start saving yourself some grief.

*This tale is quoted because it's take from a book in progress called The Suicide Note: Memoirs of an Insulin Dependent Diabetic.