Princess Mia

But I’m not depressed.

“So you can continue to cut yourself off from the things you used to love—your writing, your baby brother, your parents, your school activities, your friends—and go on feeling consumed by self-loathing, yet lacking any motivation to change, or enjoy life again?” Dr. Knutz’s voice boomed very loudly in his ranch-style office. “I could go on. Do I need to?”

I blinked at him some more. Only now I was blinking back tears. I couldn’t believe it. I really couldn’t.

I don’t have meningitis. I don’t have lassa fever.

I’m depressed. I’m actually depressed.

“I might,” I said, after clearing my throat, because it was kind of hard to talk around the big lump that had suddenly appeared there, “be a little down.”

“You know, there’s nothing wrong with admitting you’re depressed,” Dr. Knutz went on in a gentle voice. I mean, for a cowboy. “Many, many people have suffered from depression. Having depression doesn’t mean you’re crazy, or a failure, or a bad person.”

I had to blink back a lot of tears.

“Okay,” was all I could manage to say.

Then my dad reached over and took my hand. Which I didn’t really appreciate because that just made me want to cry more. Plus, my hand was super sweaty.

“And it’s okay to cry,” Dr. Knutz went on, passing me a box of tissues he’d had hidden somewhere.

How did he keep doing that? How did he keep reading my mind like that? Was it because he spent so much time out on the range? With the deer? And the antelope? What is an antelope, anyway?

“It’s perfectly normal, and even healthy, considering what’s been going on in your life lately, Mia, that you might feel sad and need to talk to someone about it,” Dr. Knutz was saying. “That’s why your family brought you here to see me. But unless you yourself admit that you have a problem and need help, there’s very little I can do. So why don’t you say what’s really bothering you, and how you’re really feeling? And this time, leave the Jungian tree of self-actualization out of it.”

And then—before I knew what was happening—I found myself not even caring that I was possibly being punk’d.

Maybe it was the Navajo rug. Maybe it was the cowboy hat on the peg on the back of the door. Maybe I just figured he was right: I couldn’t really spend the rest of my life in my room.

In any case, the next thing I knew, I was telling this strange, aging cowboy everything.

Well, not EVERYTHING, obviously, because my DAD was sitting there. Which is apparently some rule of Dr. Knutz’s, that for the initial consultation of a minor, a parent or guardian has to be present. This wouldn’t be the norm if Dr. Knutz took me on as a regular patient.

But I told him the important thing—the thing I haven’t been able to get out of my head since last Sunday when I hung up the phone after talking to Michael. The thing that’s been keeping me in bed ever since.

And that’s that the first time I ever remember Mom and me going to visit her parents back in Versailles, Indiana, Papaw warned me to stay away from the abandoned cistern in the back of the farmhouse, which was covered with an old piece of plywood, and which he was waiting for a backhoe to come and fill in with dirt.

Only I had just read Alice in Wonderland, and, of course, I was obsessed with anything resembling a rabbit hole.

And so, of course, I moved the plywood off the cistern, and stood there on the edge, looking down into the deep, dark hole, wondering if it led to Wonderland and if I could really go there.

And then the dirt around the edge gave way, and I fell down the hole.

Only I didn’t end up in Wonderland. Far from it.

I wasn’t hurt or anything, and eventually I managed to pull myself out by grabbing on to roots that were sticking out of the side of the hole. I put the plywood back where it had been and went back to the house, shaken and smelly and dirty, but no worse for wear. I never told anyone what I’d done, because I knew Papaw would have just gotten mad at me. And fortunately, no one ever found out.

But the thing is, ever since I talked to Michael last Sunday, I’ve felt as if I were sitting back at the bottom of that hole again. Really. Like I was down there, blinking at the blue sky up above, totally unsure how I’d found myself in this position.

Only this time, there were no roots to pull myself out of the hole. I was stuck down there at the bottom. I could see normal life passing by overhead—people laughing, having fun; the sun beating down; the birds and clouds in the sky—but I couldn’t get back up there to join them. I could just watch, from down at the bottom of that big, black hole.

Anyway, when I was done explaining all this—which was basically when I couldn’t talk anymore, because I was sobbing so hard—my dad started muttering darkly about what he was going to do to Papaw next time he saw him (which seemed to involve a Taser and Papaw in the shower).

Dr. Knutz, meanwhile, looked up from the piece of paper he’d been writing on the whole time I’d been talking, stared straight into my eyes, and said an amazing thing.

He said, “Sometimes in life, you fall down holes you can’t climb out of by yourself. That’s what friends and family are for—to help. They can’t help, however, unless you let them know you’re down there.”

I blinked at him some more. It was really weird, but…I hadn’t thought of that. I know it sounds dumb. But the idea of calling for help had never even occurred to me.