"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you." *

David Foster Wallace committed suicide a couple weeks ago.

I like Wallace well enough - his essay on cruise ships in his collection, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments was sheer brilliance, totally hilarious. I didn't want him to be my boyfriend (like Gina did) but he was a talented writer with a lot of appeal; he definitely had found his niche, and no one should die at the age of 46. Too young, too talented.

So, yeah. Sad. But not like if one of my idols like AS Byatt or David Mitchell had died, or if a writer I think of as a friend had passed away, even from natural causes. But three weeks later, I am still thinking about him. Just about every day, at least once, he crosses my insipid little mind, and I feel sad for him, and confused, and also, overwhelmingly, empathetic. I GET IT.

I am not saying I am suicidal – far from it, actually. (Besides, what sort of mother would kill herself when her children are this small? The guilt alone would deter me. My mom died when I was 28, and I was a wreck then.)

I am tired and often overwhelmed and frequently frustrated. I wish my house was cleaner, and I am sick of cooking chicken and pasta, and pasta and chicken, and more chicken, and more pasta, because those are the only things everyone will eat, and I wish that I had my act together enough to have up baby gates already for my crawling infant, and the patience to follow my three-year-old around with a bottle of Febreze, a handful of rags, MORE clean underwear, and a smile on my face.

I wish I could sit down at my computer and write every day for several hours instead of in snippets and snatched moments throughout the day while the boys fight and the baby fusses and I have to simultaneously engage in pretend dialogue with a shark handpuppet.

I can’t recall the last book I finished – which is extremely sad, and those of you who know me well know this is probably the most disturbing admission I feel I have ever made. I have never ever before in my life not had time to read. I have sneered at mothers who said they didn’t have time to read. “Why,” I would proudly declare, “it’s all I do. I eat, I sleep, I breathe, I read.” Well, not anymore. (And the sleeping isn’t all that consistent either.)

I get migraines consistently, and wake up with a headache probably four days out of seven.

But despite all this, life is ok. Often even more than ok. I have many hours, even days, of happiness and fun and absolute joy with my babies. I don’t hate my husband (most of the time) and sometimes I even like him a bunch. I have several close friends whom I even get to see occasionally, and several reliable and wonderful babysitters, and a fun (if slightly crazy) family. I have my Facebook pals, and my bloggie buddies, and a dear friend several thousand miles away whom I have never met but I love like crazy anyway.

So here’s what upsets me. Yes, Wallace’s death upsets me, and also, the fact that it went largely unremarked except by the literary community. But what sticks with me, and keeps coming back to haunt me, leaving a stone in the pit of my stomach, is Elizabeth Wurtzel’s quote about Wallace’s suicide:

"So here is the miserable truth that those of us who are given to depression are forced to face when David Foster Wallace commits suicide: It didn’t and doesn’t turn out well. There is no happy ending to the story of sorrow if you are born with a predilection for despair. The world is, after all, a coarse and brutal and cruel place. It’s only a matter of how long you can live with it."

Her words display the bare, unvarnished truth for all to see and acknowledge. And it makes me want to lie down on the floor somewhere dark and warm, and cry.
Because it came to me this morning, finally, that these words, even more than Wallace’s actual death, are what has been dogging me. These words, and the truth underlying them, that I indeed was born with a “predilection to despair,” leave me acknowledging that what’s been wrong with me lately can’t just be attributed to lack of sleep and not enough time to myself, although those things certainly contribute. The reason I haven’t wanted to blog or write or read or exercise or really do much of anything is because I am cycling through my zombie phase. As I have done all my life, and as I will continue to do, I presume. And when I am in that place, and realize that’s where I am, I am overcome with both melancholy and exhaustion. Because it doesn’t ever end. It eases, it changes, it ebbs and flows, but it never ever ends. It’s only a matter of how long you can live with it.

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*David Foster Wallace