“Has it never happened to you that you did something wrong, even though you knew it was wrong? That’s a part of free will too.”—Peter Stamm, Seven Years

When Cara is diagnosed with high-functioning depression, she is ripping up a used tissue in her hands. It’s reducing itself from soft quasi-fabric to bits of damp fluff and the therapist tells her to stop.

Look at me. Don’t put that on the table. It’s unsanitary.

The therapist works out of her apartment. The table sits outside her tiny Stuyvesant Town kitchen, and the way the apartment is structured, Cara can see into her bedroom in the back. There is no divide between her home and work life. She can’t imagine. The therapist sleeps in the same place she listens to Cara detail getting raped twice, being abandoned by her father, and every man Cara gets involved with. Who’s the latest, by the way? A gorgeous man named Kevin beset by mild anxiety who enjoys dancing, sweet pickles, and talking for hours on the phone. The therapist watches television a couple feet away from the table at which she makes Cara take quizzes about a reduced sexual appetite, reduced interest in things she used to love.

Cara works at an office. There’s a specific desk she sits at with her laptop, covered in papers. She sometimes eats there, especially if it’s cold outside. She’s fairly new at work, and the others in the office are still coworkers. When she types things on her laptop, sometimes it hurts because of the way she eats her nails. Besides that, work is fine. Work is work. When she gets home, she doesn’t check her email and she slips work Cara (a cheery worker bee) off along with her bra. She lies down and the night takes forever to end.

Cara looks at the therapist and thinks, hmm. High-functioning depression. High-functioning. That means she’s fine. That means she can go to work. So…

What’s the problem here? A thought occurs to her. Do patients ever show up while you’re getting dressed?

Don’t deflect.

The way the brain works is that it sends messages along your neural pathways and tells your body what to do. Usually you don’t get to be privy to every message. It’s not as though you actively think breathe every time you inhale. Thank goodness your brain is not a yoga master; Cara would go mad. She once tried yoga. It was a very brief affair. Cara’s brain tells her body what to do and her body can get it done most of the time. She procrastinates like hell, but she gets it done eventually.

What’s funny about high functioning depression is that you can function. It’s not like life just stops. When Cara talks to her friends that are depressed, they discuss not being able to get out of bed. Cara gets up and out of bed. Cara goes to work. Cara works. Everything is working.

What Cara can’t do, is focus. Her eyes slide across screens like water. She forgets to reply to her friends. She does the work she has to do and just that, no more. Is she productive? Oh yeah, definitely. Think a rusty bike. The wheels still turn, the chain creaks a bit and you know one day it’ll stop, one day it’ll fall apart…but not today. Today the bike squeaks along, and she puts a dollar in the vending machine, buys a bag of pretzels at lunch. It’s the best part of her day, feeling the salt bite into her tongue. The first thing that feels real.

Cara walks her hands across the pitted wood and stares down her therapist. Let me guess, you want to give me medicine.

I can’t prescribe it. Not in this state.

Big Pharma.

Cara, it’s a problem. There are three things to worry about. Work, yes, but personal life and mental health matters too. Your personal life is—

I don’t want to talk about that.

The therapist purses her lips. How’s Kevin, then?

Kevin is great.

The thing about Kevin is, it’s new. She can’t be herself around him yet. He tells her that he loves how unique she is, the things she thinks up. She gives him the fun thoughts, the quips. He doesn’t know she’s in therapy. You may have heard that there’s a bit of a stigma. She doesn’t talk to Kevin when she feels like garbage, because this is the way he sounds on the line if she mentions she’s feeling a little down:

Are you going to start taking antidepressants? Are you okay? Cara, listen to me. Cara, you’re worrying me.

What right does he have to be worried? It’s been a month. They make each other laugh. Everything is working. He can worry about her if she misses a date; he doesn’t get to poke around in her brain.

Cara does not miss dates.

፨

Refilling her water bottle is risky business. There’s a woman named Lucille, who prefers Lucy, and she likes to do the fake how-are-you. The one where you ask so you can talk about yourself. Cara can easily be robbed of a solid fifteen minutes of the work day when Lucille stalks her out at the watering hole. The diagnosis is still on her mind this morning when she is ambushed, and she sucks in air through her teeth hard, leaning back against the cooler.

Cara!

Lucille.

I told you, you can call me Lucy, Lucille says for the fortieth time and Cara narrowly avoids smirking.

My mistake.

Lucille shifts her weight, clearly waiting to be asked. Cara deliberately takes a sip of water. New York City water is delicious. It could be colder, but it’s not like she’s feeling much lately regardless.

Lucille finally gives in. How are you?

Cara contemplates the question a little longer than usual before she fires back with a Fine. How are you, Cara? No one actually wants to know…unless they’re getting paid to sit in their own apartment. Lucille keeps staring, so she follows up with and you?

I’ve had the most horrible weekend, simply terrible.

She keeps going with her external monologue while Cara has a conversation with herself.

I feel as though being told I had depression gave me depression. Now I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s hard to get the word out of your mind. Depression. If I was depressed, I wouldn’t be able to laugh at anything. What about the sexual desire? I still get a thrill when Kevin kisses me harder than he should on the street.

What do you think of that, Cara?

Cara blinks at her dumbly. I’m not sure, I’ll have to get back to you. Also, I have to get back to work.

She manages to slip away. Everything is working.

፨

A couple of weeks later at work, there’s an issue with the bike. Her life, she means. What is she, some kind of poet? She’s certainly not a good worker bee. She’s been up for a promotion at work, and she does not get it.

She does not get why she does not get it. Sure, she isn’t doing her best, but her mediocre is a hell of a lot better than what some other people are working with here. Come on. This is an office full of Lucilles. She sends that in a text to Kevin and he replies with something about some zombie show and she briefly considers making a zombie-depression joke, but decides she’d rather not deal with getting a personal phone call during work.

She brings this up with her supervisor when the promotion is given to Bradley. Nothing wrong with Bradley, really. The zombies wouldn’t touch him, but that’s beside the point. Plenty of people function without brains. The scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz was doing great…but he wasn’t getting promoted in the cornfield, was he?

I deserved that promotion.

I know you did, Cara. You work hard. But you need to have a life outside work.

I have a life outside work. I just don’t talk about it.

People say you’re a little…tightly wound.

How does that affect my work? It doesn’t. But Bradley needs focus.

You know I give everything I have to this job, right?

That’s not healthy.

There’s that thing again. Health. Cara looks up at wherever God is supposed to be, and asks the guy, well frankly, what the hell?

It’s a minor setback, but it’s fine. So the work isn’t perfect. She won’t let work affect her work. That makes sense. That makes sense. Everything is working.

That night she doesn’t even take off her bra, just falls into bed.

፨

One night Cara is drinking wine and decides to just get really drunk. There’s no reason for it. She isn’t fighting with her mother for once, Kevin has finally given her some space, and work went well today. She even got to bring up the possibility of a raise. Things are looking up.

She is looking down, into the bottom of a near-empty bottle of Merlot.

The next morning, she is hungover at work and it shows. She messes up a presentation, and begs the bathroom light to dim. She almost forgets to wear a bra to work, but she remembers to take it off later at least.

፨

Hey Kevin, she asks one night, rolling over in his bed.

Yeah?

Why don’t you leave a few marks?

Marks?

Yeah, like we’re kids. I’ll do it too. It’d be funny.

What about work?

Hey can you bite me really hard so I can feel something?

What?

Bad joke, she laughs. He can’t see the way her eyes slide past him in the dark. He does as he’s told, the precious boy, and she has to wear a scarf to work. It’s an interesting look for July, and she knows she’s hot gossip at lunch. Lucille even has the nerve to ask where she got her scarf. Her supervisor says nothing except:

Don’t let it affect your work.

The bike is skidding left and right on the pavement, but she’s holding on with an iron grip. This is her life, work is her life, and she cannot screw up. She just wants to feel. She just wants to—

፨

Kevin ends it on a rainy Saturday in his apartment, sitting on the couch. He’s kind enough to ask if she wants anything to drink first. It is seven weeks into their relationship, three hours into this date. Swelteringly hot out, and they just got sweatier. She’s only just re-hooked her bra.

Can we talk?

There’s a weird noise starting up in the back of her head. Her shoulders tense. She knows he can tell she’s on guard. Usually, he’d offer her a back rub. Once he did that smack in the middle of things when she was starting to panic and tighten up, and he was right. They are very relaxing.

I’m sorry I just—you and I are completely different people. We’re in different places. You have your life entirely together—I feel like I’m holding you back.

It sounds like a bicycle chain is creaking in the back of her brain.

You’re so mature, I feel like…we both knew this was doomed from the start. It’s almost like—

The chain is creaking louder, the wheels are tipping. She’s riding a bike into the river.

Why did we even try?

Cara looks him calmly in the eye. The bike is crashing to the ground. She’s falling, she’s landing on her knees. There’s blood everywhere. Someone’s screaming.

That makes sense, she says calmly.

Did you try? Were you trying, Kevin? It was doomed from the start, but nobody told me. I would’ve loved to get that memo. No one put it on a post-it note in my cubicle. No one forwarded the email. No one—the bike is on fire now. The bike is actually on fire. Where’s the fire department? Where’s the police? This was a really messed up bike, lady. Why were you still using this bike?

I had nothing else, this is what they gave me, this is what I’ve been working with all my life, I had nothing—

Cara.

She looks at him. Yes?

Can we be friends?

She nods, and she makes herself stay an extra ten minutes to finish the chamomile tea he brewed for her even though an inferno is raging in the back of her head. Everything is working? She stays upright, perfect posture, riding the subway home. She turns her key in the door. She opens the door.

She falls down.

She stays on the floor for the rest of the weekend.

She does not shower. She eats raw spaghetti and peanut butter for breakfast. It’s all that’s left in the kitchen. She eats raw spaghetti for lunch. To switch things up, she skips dinner.

Monday arrives on stilts, thoroughly out of reach.

It’s time for work.

፨

Cara cracks her knuckles before she begins to type it out. Her fingers leave sweaty prints on the keyboard. Why didn’t she buy a case?

Dear Alana, I can’t make it into work today. I have to take a personal day.

She deletes the second line.

I’m contagious.

Depression is a non-communicable disease, you idiot.

I need a mental health day.

Delete.

I need a day to fall apart, okay? I’ll be back to normal tomorrow. I just need to fall apart and be broken for today. I just can’t do it anymore.

Delete.

I’ve eaten all my nails, and I want to drink and it’s seven in the morning. I want my brain to stop working because it’s moving so slowly and it’s just telling me to die. I’m not suicidal- I can barely get up today. Killing myself would be too much effort. Too messy.

She holds her right index finger down on the delete button with her eyes boring into the jagged nail hanging off the cuticle. Ultimately she settles on:

I’m not feeling well.

፨

Cara calls her therapist, who makes an appointment with a general practitioner to give Big Pharma one more sucker. Cara taking a leave of absence from work garners much debate.

You never used to be like this, says her mother over the phone.

Yes I was. I just hid it, and now I can’t hide anymore. It was all working until it stopped.

How is this going to affect your job?

I can’t work like this.

Is this about Kevin?

She thinks about the way he made her feel. She thinks about getting off the phone with him, and her lungs constricting. How he was a respite, not a cure. An umbrella, not clear skies. She thinks about the times she let him go to voicemail, shaking sitting on the side of the highway with her legs drawn up like a kid.

No. It’s about me.

፨

She hears later from Liz that she’s a popular topic for gossip. People whisper about it in the lounge during lunch.

How were we supposed to know she was depressed?

She seemed fine.

She was great at Ed’s dinner party. She told that joke about the leprechaun. How can a depressed person make jokes?

Cara can’t remember the joke, but fair point. Surely it’s all an act. She’s looking for disability, worker’s comp. God forbid she look for help. The office feels like years ago, miles away. She couldn’t stop this from affecting her work. But no one talked about this. How could she know that one day she wouldn’t be able to handle it anymore?

She did her work.

I can’t believe she’s letting this affect her work. says her supervisor wearing the face of a calm dragon in a dream that Cara wakes from, sweating bullets. She seemed fine.</p> Yes, but did anyone actually ask?

Yes, but did anyone actually ask?