Bergman Revisited

My husband claims he's never been depressed. That depresses me. At the very least he should be depressed because he's married to me. But no. He'll admit to occasional lapses of existential despair, as if that compares. Whatever. My husband comes from cheerful genes.

My mother was cheerful, it drove me to drink. Though I wasn't born a drunkard. I was born Finnish, like my father. I.E., congenitally angst-ridden. I can just picture it: My Birth. No sooner did I make it down the chute than I took one look around and stuck my thumb in my mouth. Later I replaced it with a bottle and other similarly-shaped objects.

How can anyone with half a brain live on this particular planet at this particular point in time and remain cheerful? It boggles the mind. Boggle. Isn't that a brand of wine? I wouldn't call my husband cheerful, that'd be a stretch. But he doesn't have an ounce of angst in his body. And he calls himself a Scandinavian, the nerve.

If it weren't for angst, I'd vaporize. Poof! Angst is what holds my very cells together. Sometimes when I first wake up at noon there's a nanosecond between sleep and wakefulness when I experience briefly what life must be like for normal people. It's as if I'm suspended in a gently drifting cloud of well-being. Like Charmin. Then it comes to me: I'm awake! I'm alive! On this particular planet! At this particular point in time! And another teeth-gnashing, hand-wringing, nail-biting day commences.

I've always believed that cheerful people are operating with half a brain. Sort of like drunkards, but without the booze. In which case, why bother. Except I'm not so sure anymore. Maybe it's a chemical thing. I.E., the aforementioned cheerfulness gene. Something you have no control over, like the weather or urinary incontinence. That smiling idiot one car over might be a Nobel Laureate for all I know, who, through an accident of genetics, just happened to be born smiling like an idiot. On second thought, there wouldn't be no Nobel Laureate in this here neck of the woods, so never mind.

Face it, getting born is a crapshoot. Or as we say in the preschool set, "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit!"

I wouldn't know normal if it bit me in the ass. I came into consciousness thinking everyone secretly ground their teeth into nubs and chewed their cuticles bloody. I considered my many and varied tics to be bodily functions, like breathing or masturbating. I mean, doesn't everyone count sidewalk squares on their way to school while silently chanting the alphabet backwards? And after taking Beginning Touch Typing in junior high, doesn't everyone automatically begin air-typing everything they hear? When my boyfriend wondered why I kept tap-tap-tapping on his back as we danced, it finally occurred to me I might be a wee bit different from other kids. Unbeknownst to him (and me), I'd been transcribing the lyrics to "Surfer Girl" on his madras button-down as it played over and over on the jukebox.

The song, not the shirt, played over and over. But you figured that out, right?

Speaking of figuring things out. I'll give my husband something to be depressed about. I'll tell him I've decided not to sign the divorce papers. If that doesn't do it, I'm throwing in the towel. Drenched from over a half century of tears, to be sure.