{"id":111388,"date":"2017-06-05T10:30:17","date_gmt":"2017-06-05T14:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=111388"},"modified":"2017-06-04T22:17:23","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T02:17:23","slug":"number-reasons-ive-depressed-lately","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/06\/05\/number-reasons-ive-depressed-lately\/","title":{"rendered":"A Number of Reasons I\u2019ve Been Depressed Lately"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One. It\u2019s early September of 2015 and I\u2019m on the island of Santorini for a literary festival. After the short reading, which takes place outdoors on a patio, the Greek audience asks questions, the first of which is, \u201cWhat do you think of Donald Trump?\u201d<\/p>\n

Since announcing his candidacy, the reality-show star has been all over the news. Every outrageous thing he says is repeated and analyzed\u2014like he\u2019s a real politician. I answer that I first became aware of Donald Trump in the late 1980s. That was when Alma, a Lithuanian woman I was working for, bought his book\u00a0The Art of the Deal<\/em>\u00a0and decided he was wonderful. Shortly afterward, I saw him on Oprah<\/em>, and ever since then he\u2019s always been in the background, this ridiculous blowhard, part showman and part cartoon character. I see his presidential bid as just another commercial for himself. It wouldn\u2019t surprise me if he were to name the Hamburglar as his running mate. So I say that on stage and then have to explain who the Hamburglar is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Two. A month before the election a man picks me up at the Philadelphia airport and takes me to Red Bank, New Jersey, for a show. We get to talking and I learn his name is Michael. He is white and fifty-five and used to work for Pathmark, a supermarket chain that went bankrupt and closed the last of its branches in 2015. I ask some general questions and learn that grocery stores make the brunt of their money on junk food. \u201cThe highest markup, though, is on spices\u2014seventy-six percent!\u201d says Michael, adding that the most frequently stolen items are razor blades, baby formula, and big jugs of laundry detergent, which seem like they\u2019d be pretty hard to shoplift. I mean, those things have gotten huge, like gas cans.<\/p>\n

\u201cNowadays people walk out with the whole cart,\u201d Michael says. \u201cRoll out the door saying, Just try to stop me!\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s rare for a hired driver to overtly discuss politics, and rarer still for him or her to introduce the topic. They will sometimes skirt around it, though. We pass a Trump sign on the road and Michael acknowledges it, saying, sourly, \u201cI just feel that for guys like us, white guys our age, if we need any help\u2014housing or food stamps or whatever\u2014it\u2019s the back of the line. You know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n

Well isn\u2019t that sort of where the line forms? <\/em>I think. Michael\u2019s is a group I\u2019ve been hearing a lot about lately. White men who, following eight years of a black president, feel forgotten.<\/p>\n

How exactly did Obama neglect you?<\/em> I want to ask but don\u2019t. Instead, I change the subject to lines in general. \u201cI didn\u2019t wait more than a few minutes to check in for my flight this morning,\u201d I say cheerfully, not adding that I\u2019m executive platinum on American so never have to wait for anything. When I do have to wait, I\u2019m appalled.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Three. I donate a thousand dollars to the Hillary for America\u00a0campaign and within what seems like minutes I get an email from them saying, in effect, That\u2019s great, but can we have more? Her organization is by no means unique in this regard. Everyone I donate to acts the same way, and I wind up unsubscribing from their emails and resenting them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Four. I talk to a longtime friend of the family who tells me with great authority that Hillary Clinton is a member of the Illuminati and that she and her husband have killed scores of people, including children, who they also sexually molested.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re kidding, right?\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not, and within minutes words are shooting from his mouth like water from a fire hose. It\u2019s hard to catch it all, but I do grab hold of, \u201cYou think it\u2019s a coincidence that Prince was murdered on Queen Elizabeth\u2019s birthday?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWho said he was murdered?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, please,\u201d this person says. \u201cYou honestly believe he died of an \u2018accidental drug overdose?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

The guy speaks to me like I\u2019m an idiot. \u201cAnd the queen had him killed \u2026 why, exactly?\u201d I ask. \u201cBecause his name was Prince?\u201d<\/p>\n

I later look at one of the websites this person relies on for information. On it, an anonymous source close to the royal family\u2014a \u201cPalace Insider\u201d\u2014reports hearing the queen saying to another Illuminati member at a tea party that before the year ends, three more world famous musicians must die.<\/p>\n

None of the websites my friend looks at say anything bad about Donald Trump. Rather he is hailed as a man of peace. The ones they hate are George Soros, of course, and, surprisingly, Bill Gates, who has murdered more innocents than even the Clintons, apparently. My friend gets almost feverish when he talks about these people and the way they\u2019re all connected: Queen Elizabeth leads to Jay Z leads to the Centers for Disease Control leads to the faked Sandy Hook shooting and the way the government staged 9\/11.<\/p>\n

I want to laugh. Then I want him to laugh and say, \u201cJust kidding!\u201d But he honestly believes all this, and is frustrated that I won\u2019t believe it as well. \u201cWake up!\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Five. An article in the New York Times<\/em> suggests that Trump should run with the Hamburglar and I think, Hey, that\u2019s my line<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Six. On election night, I am in Portland, Oregon. At the start of the evening I feel confident, but come dinnertime I start to get nervous. I eat alone in the fancy hotel restaurant, watching the waiters and waitresses for clues that I am worrying over nothing. \u201cAny news?\u201d I keep asking, taking it for granted that, like me, they voted for Clinton. They have ironic tattoos and know about wine, who else could they have been for? <\/em>I think. <\/em><\/p>\n

Back in the room, I turn on the radio and look at the electoral map online. I go to bed, reach for my iPad. Shut my eyes, reach for my iPad. When the election is called for Trump, I lie there, unable to sleep. In the middle of the night, I go to the fitness center and watch the little TV embedded in my elliptical machine. The news had been telling me for months that Clinton was a shoo-in. Now they want me to listen as they soul search and determine how they got it so wrong. \u201cFuck you,\u201d I say to the little screen.<\/p>\n

An hour later, I take a bath and get back into bed. Staring at the ceiling, wide-awake, I suddenly think of Cher and realize that what I\u2019m feeling, she\u2019s feeling as well. So are millions of other people of course: Hugh, my sisters, all my friends except for the conspiracy theorist. Oddly, it\u2019s this woman I\u2019ve never met or even seen in person, who brings me comfort. The next morning I wander the city in a daze, my eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, thinking I\u2019m not alone. I\u2019ve got Cher. <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Seven. A few days after the election, I\u2019m in Oakland, California. It\u2019s Sunday afternoon and I notice a great many people walking toward what looks like a park, some of them carrying signs. \u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d I ask a young woman. Her hair is purple in some places and green in others.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh,\u201d she says. \u201cEveryone\u2019s going to gather around Lake Merritt and hold hands. We\u2019re going to form a human chain around it.\u201d She says this as though it\u2019s going to reverse time and make Donald Trump stop being the president-elect. I cringe, thinking of how this will play on Fox News\u2014\u201cWatch out everyone, they\u2019re holding hands!\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Eight. I join my family on Emerald Isle for Thanksgiving and have a great screaming fight with my Republican father, who yells at one point, \u201cDonald Trump is not <\/em>an asshole!\u201d I find this funny but at the same time surprising. Regardless of whether or not you voted for him, I thought the president-elect\u2019s identity as a despicable human being was something we could all agree on. I mean, he pretty much ran <\/em>on it.<\/p>\n

Later in our argument my father shouts, \u201cHe\u2019s the best thing that\u2019s happened to this country in years,\u201d and, \u201cIt was just locker-room talk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m in locker rooms five days a week and have never heard anyone carry on like Trump in that video,\u201d I argue. \u201cAnd if I did<\/em>, I wouldn\u2019t think, Wow, that guy <\/em>ought to be my president<\/em>. I\u2019d think he was a creep and a loser.\u201d Then I add, repeating something I\u2019d heard from someone else, \u201cBesides, he wasn\u2019t in <\/em>a locker room, he was at work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since I left the United States in 1998, I\u2019ve cast absentee ballots. Americans overseas vote from the last state they lived in, which for me was New York. Then we got the house on Emerald Isle, and I changed my location to North Carolina, where I\u2019m more inclined to feel hopeless. In 1996, in line at the grocery store in lower Manhattan, I\u2019d look at the people in front of me thinking Bill Clinton voter, Bill Clinton voter, convicted felon, Bill Clinton voter, foreign tourist, felon, felon, Bill Clinton voter, felon. <\/em><\/p>\n

At the supermarket I stomp off to after the fight with my father on Emerald Isle, it\u2019s Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump<\/em>, and then the cashier, who also voted for him. Of course, these are just my assumptions. The guy in the T-shirt that pictures a semiautomatic rifle above the message COME AND TAKE IT\u2014<\/small>the one in fatigues buying two twelve packs of beer and a tub of rice pudding\u2014didn\u2019t necessarily vote Republican. He could have just stayed home on election day and force-fed the women he holds captive in the crawl space beneath his living room.<\/p>\n

The morning after our argument, I come downstairs to find my father in the kitchen. \u201cAre you still talking to me?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n

I look at him as if he were single-handedly responsible for the election of Donald Trump, as if he had knowingly cast the tie-breaking vote and all of what is to come is entirely his fault. Then I say, \u201cYes. Of course I\u2019m still talking to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

He turns and plods into the living room. \u201cHorse\u2019s ass.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nine. On Christmas morning, at home in England, I climb into the loft space above the bathroom in search of some presents I\u2019d wrapped months earlier. The ladder I\u2019m using is wooden and has only two legs, which slip on my freshly waxed floor. I fall from a height of nine feet and land with a bang on my left side, fracturing eight ribs. Lying on the floor, stunned, and in the greatest pain of my life, it occurs to me that I might die before Trump assumes office and that maybe that won\u2019t be such a terrible thing. Amy runs out of the guest room then and Hugh charges up the stairs from the kitchen, both of them asking, \u201cWhat happened?\u201d\u00a0and \u201cAre you all right?\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to ruin Christmas, so say, \u201cI\u2019m fine. I\u2019m fine.\u201d Fine people, though, don\u2019t need ten minutes to get off the floor.<\/p>\n

Hugh phones the NHS\u2014the National Health Service\u2014and after being asked a number of preliminary questions, I\u2019m put through to a nurse named Mary.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho are you again?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cMary,\u201d she repeats, not, I notice, Mary Steward, or whatever her last name is. Everything in America is based on lawsuits, on establishing a trail. In the U.S. I\u2019d be told to come in immediately for X-rays, but in England they figure that unless you\u2019re unconscious, or leaking great quantities of fluid\u2014blood, pus, et cetera\u2014there\u2019s no point in wasting everyone\u2019s time. Mary asks me a number of questions that determine whether or not I pierced a lung, which apparently I have not. \u201cBut it really hurts when I cough,\u201d I tell her.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, David,\u201d she says brightly. \u201cThen my advice to you would be not to cough, and to have a lovely Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n

I later learn that what I suffered was called a blunt-force trauma. It\u2019s remarkably similar to how I felt after the election, as if I\u2019d been slammed against a wall or hit by a car. Both pains persist, show no signs, in fact, of ever going away. The damage is permanent. I will never be the same as I was before the accident\/election. A lovely Christmas is out of the question. Every day I lie on the floor and clutch my sides, stunned.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ten. I hold on to the most unreasonable hope: The electoral college will come to its senses and say, We can\u2019t let this happen! It will turn out that Russia tampered with our voting machines. Yet nothing stops the advancing truck. On Inauguration Day, I am in Seattle. Late in the afternoon, my old friend Lyn sends me a photo of an anti-Trump sticker someone found in Japan. It\u2019s cleverly designed: three peaks that on second glance turn out to be Trump sandwiched between two Klansmen. I want to write back and say, Ha, but instead, as a joke, I respond, \u201cDear Lyn, I\u2019m sorry you\u2019re so opposed to change, or too small-minded to move past your narrow assumptions. In the future, I\u2019d appreciate your keeping things like this to yourself. David\u201d<\/p>\n

A minute later, I send a follow-up email that says, \u201cJust kidding.\u201d And it bounces back, as do the next three emails I send. She\u2019s blocked me! <\/em>I realize. After thirty-eight years of friendship!<\/em><\/p>\n

I go to bed that night and lie awake, worried that she\u2019s telling everyone I\u2019m a Trump supporter. The news will spread and by morning I\u2019ll be ruined. But it was just a joke, I say to myself in the dark room. A horrible, horrible joke.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

David Sedaris is\u00a0the author of nine books and lives in West Sussex, England. His most recent book is <\/span><\/em>Theft By Finding: Diaries<\/span>\u00a0(1977\u20132002)<\/span><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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