Dr. King had almost forgotten her meal, but took another bite while she considered things. Then, “A lot of people are disappointed with mainstream religion these days. Tell me how you came this epiphany, if I can call it that.”
Sadler pushed his tray off to one side and folded his fingers together in the spot where it had been. “My gateway — you would probably call it ‘clinical depression’.”
She raised one eyebrow. He shifted in his seat and continued. “You could hardly blame me for disliking the way terms like that are abused in our culture. Most people would label as ‘depression’ all sorts of other things, including any reason someone might have for suicide. The two are entirely separate and converge only in a few cases. As you probably know, depression isn’t a feeling at all, but the absence of feelings. So I’m going to describe it in other terms: a substantial portion of your self dies. So much of what you value is taken away that you no longer care about anything.”
Between mouthfuls, Dr. King noted, “That’s an apt description.”
Sadler told his story. His personnel records indicated he came up one course short of his MBA, and noted a simultaneous bankruptcy. Four-point-oh business students could always get more money for school, so that wasn’t what held him back. Nor was it the nasty divorce that precipitated the bankruptcy. He was already cynical enough at that point to simply surrender his limited assets and move on with his life. It was something much more subtle.
He never could put his finger on anything specific, but something in how the marriage came apart, a tiny crack in the dike that suddenly burst and released a flood of realization that eclipsed his mild cynicism. Sure, he could make things work. Bankruptcy was easily one of the best learning experiences for a business student and there were more women out there eager for his attention. Yet somehow, it was all so pointless. He came home from the final court appearance, sat down in his ratty apartment and — out of nowhere — a massive wall crashed into him. Not that he hit the wall in some blind pursuit, but that wall fell on him, a wall he didn’t even know was there.
Everything died.
Different personalities handle such things differently. He wasn’t completely dead, but his existence had a massive void. He was too smart to dive into chemical relief; he had no significant pain to medicate. Some part of him was just enough alive to find a nameless drive to rebuild, even if he had no clue how or why. Instead of self-abuse to create something, anything, to breathe life back into his being, he chose the sorrow of self-enforced misery. He changed into hiking clothes, loaded a backpack with the few things that still had any meaning, and simply walked away.
He fasted for a week or so, though he carried a filtering water bottle so he could keep moving. It was enough to blindly wander a large forest preserve just outside of town. What drove him back to civilization was simply the dropping nighttime temperatures. He had no idea where he was, but there was a town, and a public library that was open. Because he acted quite normal, he was able to sit and warm himself until his conscious mind noticed the bank of public computer terminals. He got permission to use one and sat down. For a moment he thought about it, and then decided to avoid checking any of his previous email and social media accounts.
He checked a few common news sites. A story about some online community caught his eye and he read, then chased some of the names and terms mentioned in the story. Somehow, community felt like something he wanted. Eventually he ended up on a blog. One entry discussed depression and how the cultural mythology was responsible for more deaths than depression itself.
He stared into space for awhile. It wasn’t much, but here was something that began to fill the void, just a tiny sliver. Memorizing the URL for the blog, he clicked on one of the icons prominently displayed on the screen of every terminal there: job search. If he was going to pursue this, he needed resources. He knew this drill; in two days he had a job he could do in his sleep and a loan to cover grabbing an apartment and a cheap computer. The company he worked for provided generators for remote operations, such as oil fields, mining, etc. It was still his current employer.
The blog that had awakened his awareness was part of an online community. While their terminology was different, it was his introduction to trans-dimensional awareness. The MBA was suddenly pointless, though what he had accomplished in the old sense could still be a resource for dealing with the lower dimension.
“To enter that world required that I consciously depart from Western Civilization. In essence, my connection to it was what had died. I was free to discover something far more real. I was dead all along and never knew it. Everyone around me still lives in that graveyard. It’s not hatred or anger, but pity that looms largest in my mind. I can’t possibly explain all the factors, but I didn’t earn this. Everyone pays the same price of a kind of death to get in, but no two people pay the same price in dying to escape the mythology.”
Neither of them had to say it, but the interview was over. Dr. King sat almost motionless as Sadler lifted his food tray and strolled to the cart provided for the dirty dishes, and then left the dining hall. Eventually she more or less copied actions. Some part of her went into the trash with the uneaten portion of her meal.
The End
Excellent.