Chapter Two
Jeremey
When you have an invisible disease, your sickness isn’t your biggest problem. What you end up battling more than anything else, every single day, is other people.
It took me a long time to understand this, because the truth is, for years I didn’t know I was sick. When I look back, I’ve had depression since middle school, and the anxiety started in high school. Or maybe they were swirled together all along, and I only noticed those feelings more specifically at those times. That’s the thing with both depression and anxiety. They’re entirely in your head. People who don’t have depression or anxiety think this means you can erase negative feelings as soon as you realize they’re present. To those of us living with mental health challenges, we know it simply means your demons never take a day off.
In the first months after I graduated, I wasn’t able to think so articulately about what was going on with my brain and what might or might not be making me worse. For a long time I wasn’t able to name my conditions, and when I finally did, I felt ashamed and wrong. At that point I was largely surviving, and not well. People had always alarmed me, even when they didn’t notice me. There had been some teasing in seventh grade, and it culminated in an incident in the locker room, when a bunch of boys laughed at me and threatened to shove me naked into the hallway so the girls could laugh at me too. I started getting stomachaches every time I had PE. The nurse thought I was making it up, so I made myself vomit too when I complained. Eventually I had to go back, but I got good at hiding in the bathroom until everyone else was out. I think the teacher figured out what was going on, since he never called me out for being late.
This became the way I dealt with school. People were dangerous and usually mean, so I avoided them. I had one friend, sort of, but I think I was more a prop for Bart than an actual buddy. He certainly dropped me fast enough when my depression started getting the better of me, which was the whole of my senior year. I kept it from everyone but him until May, when I broke down during a presentation in my government class.
This earned me a trip to our family doctor, who diagnosed me with major depressive disorder. He kind of tossed off the diagnosis like I had a cold, and I got the feeling he was slapping a label on me and offering some pills more than anything else. It didn’t address the anxious feelings, but it wasn’t like I wanted another label around my neck. I was embarrassed and ashamed, and when my mom got angry and told him he didn’t know what he was talking about, I didn’t object. Mostly I was grateful they let me finish the rest of my school from home due to stress. I didn’t have to go to graduation, either.
It all sounded great at the time, like I was getting out of jail free, but the truth was now the person I battled all the time was my mother.
She hated how I kept retreating from the world, and she made it her personal mission to shove me face-first back into it. Though she’d let me skip church since confirmation, she began dragging me there by the hair again every Sunday. Talk about battling other people—after every service it was a constant barrage of my mother’s friends, whom I didn’t really know, smiling overeagerly at me, asking where I was going to school in the fall and if I was dating anyone. If I reacted badly to this onslaught and had a panic attack, Mom scolded me, and Dad glowered. Had I known losing my shit in government class would have this kind of reaction, I’d have worked harder to contain my meltdowns to the bathroom stall between classes like usual.
The neighborhood block party was another opportunity for my mom to force me to be normal—and for me to fail.
She showed me the flyer three days before and said, “We should go. It would be good to meet more of the neighbors. So many young couples have moved in.” I didn’t say no, which should have counted as me being good. I let her drag me shopping for food, even though the store always gives me a panic attack. I didn’t plead sick the day of the party, but I cried through my shower when my dad’s angry right-wing radio and TV playing at the same time overwhelmed me.
But simply being present wasn’t enough for my mom. “Help me make the salad, Jeremey.” “Run to the store for me, Jeremey.” “Go help the hostesses set up, Jeremey.” Of course I fucked all that up—I hadn’t been able to get out of the car at the store, and Dad had to go instead.
She came with me to the picnic area to help set up, nudging me with her elbow and murmuring at me to stop being so nervous. When too many commands and the loud woman from three houses down made me jumpy, the hostesses saw I wasn’t feeling well and told me to rest. “We can finish without you, don’t worry.”
Mom didn’t worry, but she was mad. According to her, my behavior embarrassed her in public.
Mom wanted a bright, smiling, charming son. She wanted me to have a different answer to the question everyone kept asking—Where are you going to school this fall? She wanted me to lie, or evade, or better yet magically not be so depressed and exhausted I usually wanted to get back in my bed instead of making it. Saying I don’t have a school picked yet was a compromise, I thought, since we all knew I wouldn’t make it anywhere, but that wasn’t the son my mom wanted.
I wasn’t the son my mom wanted.
I didn’t smile and flirt and anticipate what the hostesses needed. I cowered and averted my gaze and dropped casserole dishes. Every time someone laughed too loudly, I startled. All the conversations in so many directions made me panic, so I did my best to shut everything out—which meant when someone asked me a question, I didn’t hear it.
The hostesses and other party guests patted me on the shoulder and teased me about stress from wild teenage schedules, but my dad frowned and my mom set her lips into the thin line that promised trouble for me later. I didn’t have a wild teenage schedule. I hadn’t stayed out too late the night before. I never did. I wasn’t shy because there were girls my age at the party. That was a whole other issue, one my parents didn’t know about yet.
It wasn’t as if I didn’t try. I went to the horrible block party and was as normal as I could be. It wasn’t enough, of course. My parents weren’t ever going to listen to me. I could see the future ahead, and it was terrifying and dark and paralyzing, me in a strange dorm room in a strange city with everyone laughing at me or making uncomfortable faces and asking what my problem was. I thought, not for the first time, about how it would be best for everyone if I simply wasn’t around.
I was trying to calm myself with a plan of how I would make everything stop when the boy came up to me.
I’d seen him arrive with his parents, but basically I’d paid attention to him long enough to decide he wouldn’t bully me or make me uncomfortable, and then I’d dismissed him. Vaguely I’d noted he was different, that something about him seemed off, but otherwise I hadn’t given him a great deal of thought, only pushed him into the fog of my focus with everyone and everything else. Except suddenly he was coming up to me, clearly intending to initiate conversation.
The weird thing was, he didn’t look at me. He looked near me, but he didn’t look me in the eye and smile. He stopped in front of me, planting his feet heavily on the ground. Leaning to the side, his hands clutched and bent at an odd angle in front of him, he stared at the air beside me and spoke.
“Hello. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Emmet Washington. How do you do?”
I blinked at him, not exactly understanding. I mean—I understood what he said, but the way he said it was so strange. He sounded slightly robotic, all his words stuffed together in a string, all the vocal inflections put in the wrong places. Even the question was off—he made his voice go up at the end, like he was aware it had to do that to be a question, but it wasn’t the right kind of up.
There’s something wrong with him, the panicked voice in my brain whispered. I drew back, rounding my shoulders and shrinking into myself.
Emmet kept speaking, and I started to wonder if he had a teleprompter in the space beside me he stared at, as rehearsed as his words were. “It is a lovely day for a picnic, isn’t it? Not too hot and not windy.”
I had to say something. It was clearly my turn to talk, but I was so confused. Why was he talking to me? What was I supposed to say?
He’s just being polite. Maybe his mom made him come to the picnic too, and told him to go be social. The thought relaxed me a little. Obviously Emmet was special needs. Would it kill me to be nice to him?
“H-hi.” I blushed, embarrassed at my own ineptitude. Who’s special needs now, idiot?
If Emmet thought I was a tool, he didn’t show it. He waited patiently, rocking gently on his heels, staring at the place beside my head. His posture was so odd. His shoulders were too high, and his hands were all twisted in front of him. Sometimes he moved them, but only for a moment, and then they’d go rigid again.
He was cute. His hair was light brown and a little long, fanning around his face like he was in a boy band. His eyes were pale blue, with a lot of lines in them, like refracted crystal.
“You’re supposed to introduce yourself now,” Emmet said at last.
“S-sorry.” I started to hold out my hand, then retracted it, not feeling brave. I tucked my fingers under my arms. “I…I’m Jeremey.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jeremey.” He waited a beat, and I half-wondered if he wasn’t counting, like he knew he should pause and was waiting it out. “I’m a sophomore this fall at Iowa State University. I study applied physics and computer science. I enjoy puzzles and games and taking walks.” Another pause, as measured as the last. “What about you?”
I felt jumbled, torn between discomfort at his disinclination to go away and astonishment at what he had told me. “You…you go to college?” And studied applied physics?
Suddenly I felt unsure about my special-needs assumption. Which made me feel guilty, and shamed, and made the panic around the edges of my consciousness close in tighter.
Emmet continued on as if I weren’t quietly freaking out. “I do go to college. We moved here last fall so I could attend school. It’s not a good idea for me to live in a dorm or on my own, and Mom said it was time for a change anyway. My dad works at ConAgra as a research specialist. My mom is a general practitioner part-time at Ames Medical Clinic. My aunt Althea works at West Street Deli and is an activist. I want to be either a programmer or a physicist. I haven’t decided yet.” Pause. “What do you do, Jeremey? Do you go to school?”
Physicist. I swallowed hard, feeling confused and lost and inadequate. “N-no. I…graduated in May. H-high school.”
“Do you plan to go to college?”
It was nice he didn’t assume I was going to school, but the shame of saying no, I was running as far from college as I could, was still too much. “I…don’t want to. But my parents—” I glanced around to make sure Mom and Dad weren’t listening. “They’re making me go to the University of Iowa.”
Emmet frowned, and his rocking became more pronounced. “That’s too bad. They should let you go to Iowa State. It’s a good school, and it’s right here in Ames.”
It was funny—I’d been spiraling into guilt at speaking badly of my parents, but Emmet simply breezed over it. It inspired me to confess more. “I don’t want to go to school at all.”
His gaze never wavered from the space beside my ear. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.” It was too much to keep looking at him—made me feel overwhelmed—so I stared at the ground in front of me. “I want to rest. This last year has been difficult, particularly the last month. But I guess real life doesn’t work that way.”
“What’s been difficult?”
For a little while talking with Emmet had been okay, almost pleasant, but now I wanted to stop. I tried to think of how I could get out of the conversation.
Emmet stopped rocking. “I’m sorry. I think I’ve made you uncomfortable. Was that a bad question?”
I glanced up at him, surprised. He rocked overtly now. He was upset. I needed to make him not feel bad. “It wasn’t a bad question. I’m…kind of a mess.”
“You’ve seemed sad lately, when I see you in your yard.”
Whoa. “You—see me in my yard?”
“Yes. You live across the train tracks from me. I see you sitting on your deck or working in the garden. Sometimes you seem sad.”
I probably did appear sad in the backyard a lot—it was where I went when I needed to get away from my parents. The idea the neighbors had been watching me freaked me out and made me embarrassed again. “I’m…sorry.”
“Why are you sorry for being sad?”
I needed this conversation to stop. “I…don’t know.”
“You’re uncomfortable again.”
I was. I was starting to breathe too fast too, and I could feel my heart banging like it wanted out of my rib cage. I shut my eyes. Oh God, I was going to have a panic attack here, at the picnic. My mother would never forgive me. “I—I have to…go.” I glanced around, realizing how many people had arrived, how close they were to me. My breath got shallower and shallower, and I wanted to cry. “I can’t get out of here. I’m trapped. They’re going to be so angry.”
“Will you let me help you?”
I blinked at Emmet, not understanding what he was saying at first. He still didn’t look at me, but he had his hand out, and he’d stopped rocking, waiting.
I put my hand in his. I don’t know why, but I let him lead me away from the tree, away from the picnic. He navigated me around some garbage cans at the corner of the house, parked me on a bench and sat beside me. He let go of my hand, and he left plenty of space between us. He said nothing, only sat with me as I took deep breaths and calmed myself down.
“Th-thanks,” I said, when I could speak again.
He sat straight in his seat, staring at my knees. “I’m sorry if I said the wrong thing. I tried to practice, but it’s hard, meeting someone.”
“You—practiced?”
“Yes. I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time.”
“You…wanted to meet me?” For a long time?
“Yes.” He rocked on the seat, moving his gaze to a tree. “I wanted to make a good first impression, but I gave you a panic attack. I’m sorry.”
Shame filled me, thick and unpleasant. “You didn’t do that. I’m…a mess. I was embarrassed to admit I didn’t want to go to school.”
“It’s a big transition. You should tell your parents you need to move more slowly.”
My bitter laugh caught at the edge of my throat. “My parents tell me I need to get over it.”
“I’m sorry. That’s a mean thing to say.”
I don’t know why I did it. Even as the words formed on my lips, part of my brain tried to shut me down, but Emmet scrambled all my expectations and assumptions, and apparently when that happens, my sensors get tripped. Instead of making an excuse for them, instead of murmuring yeah, tell me about it or something else like that, I said, “I have depression.”
“Oh. Do you mean MDD? Major depressive disorder? Clinical depression?”
I nodded, ashamed to my toes. “I…had a breakdown at school. I didn’t go to class for the last two weeks. I graduated, but since I didn’t go to the ceremony, sometimes I’m not sure it actually happened. I’m still stuck in the front of the class, blacking out because I’m not getting enough air.” The memory of that horrible day hung on me like fog. “My doctor wants me to take drugs, but my parents won’t let me.”
“Modern antidepressant medication increases monoamines in the synaptic cleft, and they’re clinically proven to elevate mood and alleviate depressive symptoms in many cases. Sometimes it takes time to find the right drug, and for some people they never work, especially without the addition of talk therapy, but they’re effective for a number of patients.”
This was the same thing the doctor said to me, I was pretty sure, but I didn’t understand it any more now than I had in May. It kept weirding me out how smart Emmet was—he seemed like someone I should have to compose small sentences for, but obviously that wasn’t the case. I wished I could ask him about that, but all I could think of was what is wrong with you, which was awful.
“How do you know so much about depression?” I asked instead.
“I read about it. I had a depressive episode when I was thirteen, so I researched my condition. Drugs aren’t advisable for teens except in severe circumstances, so I practiced mindful meditation and exercised. I also started homeschooling, which helped. Sometimes I have anxiety now, but most of the time I can make modifications to my daily life and avoid stressful situations.”
How was he rattling all this off like it was no big deal? Both the technical mechanism of depression and how it took him out of school? “Modifications?”
“Yes. I have a lot of modifications. I have a regular schedule and signs I use with my family to let them know I’m getting upset. At school it’s harder, but mostly I keep to myself and don’t talk to other people, and they leave me alone. Since I’m a genius, my professors like me and help if other students are mean. My peers call me names sometimes, but I put my earbuds in so I can’t hear them, and it’s fine.”
“Why…do they call you names?”
“Because I have autism.”
I don’t know what I’d expected him to say, but it wasn’t that. I’m pretty sure I stared, possibly with my mouth open. “You—you’re autistic?” I bit my tongue before I could add, you can’t be. Something was off about him, yes, but…autism? Weren’t autistics unable to speak, unable to touch people?
Emmet kept staring at the tree. “Yes. I have autism spectrum disorder. My brain is wired differently than most people’s. But it’s not like depression where they think it’s about monoamines. It manifests as social disorder and in how my body behaves, my mannerisms. I’m intelligent, more so than most people, but I have a hard time interacting with others. So most people act like there’s something wrong with me, that I’m stupid.”
Which is basically what I’d done. I felt awful. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. They’re the ones missing out.” He paused again, but this time I was pretty sure he was working out what to say, not waiting because he felt he was supposed to. “I was hoping you’d want to be friends with me.”
I remembered he’d said he’d been wanting to meet me for a long time. I realized he’d worked up the courage to introduce himself to me, as if I were someone people clamored to get to know. The thought made me feel wonderful and self-conscious at once. “I’m not interesting. I…don’t have many friends.”
“Me either.” He turned his face so he almost looked at me, and he held out his hand. “What do you think? Should we give friendship with each other a whirl?”
I stared at his hand, unsure of what to do with it. Confused, flattered, terrified, and above all hypnotized, I put my hand in his. When he squeezed my fingers, a thrill raced through me.
For the first time since my meltdown, I wasn’t thinking about how to make the world stop, how to escape the failure that was my life. I thought about Emmet Washington, and physicists, and autism, and monoamines.
I thought about what it would be like, being Emmet’s friend.