Lost

[W]hat sort of dejection is this, that leaves one the strength to write, and write, and write? If you can write about the wreckage the wreckage is not complete. You are intact. Here is a rule: the despairing writer is never the most despairing person in the world.

  —Leon Wieseltier 

The story of other people's ennui is rarely uplifting or particularly interesting, so I'm going to try to keep this short. Still, I do have to say something, finally.

I'm in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. I've been wandering there, more or less aimlessly, since losing my brother last fall. I'm looking for a way out—which is an improvement—but I'm not there yet. My next turn may reveal an exit, or may lead me down yet another wretched, darkened corridor.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world stubbornly continues to exist. I once had a traffic school instructor, an off-duty cop, tell me that for lost drivers the rules of the road simply cease to be relevant. They'll stop suddenly, cut you off, run stop lights, always with the same excuse: I didn't mean to, officer, but you see, I'm lost.

As if that matters to the guy pinned under your rear tire.

Depression, like so many other psychopathologies, is relentlessly, insufferably selfish. So for the unanswered email, the un-RSVP'd invitations, the missed appointments, the unreturned messages—both past and future: I'm sorry. For the short temper, the disinterested responses, the refusals to participate: I'm sorry. Above all, though, for failing to make the most of my life these past several months, even in the wake of such a cruel lesson in life's fragility, I'm truly and deeply sorry.

I didn't plan it that way. But you see, I'm lost.