FudgeCake vs. The Abominable Mondays

Let's be real for a minute or two. This post was meant to be the first in a series of shorts about FudgeCake, a chocolate-based vigilante who, together with her friends Nico and Ethan, fight against the crude but oppressive Abominable Mondays. However, just like a caterpillar turns into a butterfly and a bud into a flower, this became about depression and what I did to overcome it.

I did not overcome it.

Let us begin by describing what depression is. Google search presents it as:

1. feelings of severe despondency and dejection, and

2. a long and severe recession in an economy or market.

Ignore the second one for now. The Mayo Clinic describes it as "a mental health disorder characterized by persistently depressed mood or loss of interest in activities, causing significant impairment in daily life". For those who have never felt nor understood depression, let me sum it up for you. Go to the sink. plug the drainage and fill the bowl with water. Against your better judgement of water conservation, sink your hand into the chilly, probably-cholera-infested water and pull the plug. Congratulations! Now you know what depression would look like if it had form.

Just like that whirlpool that stirs and sucks the water into it, depression is an emotional black hole that sucks whatever light or life you have left. It is an empty spot in the universe of emotions that can never be filled. A space where the sun never shines, where the stars never twinkle. It is where the devil lives. Pour everything into it - Junk food (FudgeCake), Alcohol (Ethan for ethanol), drug abuse (Nico for nicotine). The abyss is filled for a moment, but when the devil eats it all up, s/he leaves you wanting more and more.

The Abominable Mondays are everything that we, as a human race, abhor: Mondays, helplessness, whoever the current president is, the way your face looks, etc. FudgeCake represents all the junk food in the world. She is an innocent being who really means no one any harm. The only problem is that her means of saving the world have the long term effects of lifestyle diseases and hiked hospital bills. Ethan is as laid back as laid back can be. He, too, is a vigilante but he saves only those who want him to be their saviour. His effects are not as gentle as FudgeCake's for he demands the livers and the submission of those he saves, promising to rescue them whenever they call to him. Nico, who is just but a child, is the worst of them all. She doesn't save; she consumes and destroys, regardless of whether they are the Abominable Mondays or humans who are within her reach. The original story was meant to revolve around FudgeCake, in denial about her heroism because Ethan once told her that she is just like him, that she does not save without a price. She could not stand the idea of being as decadent as Ethan, and so she ventured into the depths of their city, Metropolita, to find a way to become a true and pure hero.

It would have been an epic story, an Alice-in-Wonderland retelling of how I dove headfirst into confectionery in order to curb my depressive tendencies. Perhaps I shall write it one of these fine days, but for now, let us stick to the topic at hand.

So, why is this post about depression?

That is a simple enough question. Depression is what gives birth to the stories I write. Sad as it may be, it is the fuel that brings the engine of imagination to life, the demon that possesses my mind and commands my arm to write. The few people who have read the unpublished skeleton of The Orisha Saga have always asked me where I got my inspiration from. "What made you think of writing about cursed gods in the first place?" "How are you able to write so well, so immersively?" And I lied. I told them it was from books, TV, movies. Harry Potter. Neil Gaiman. Christopher Nolan. I told no one that it is all because I was depressed.

Now, don't get me wrong. Depression is by no means a graceful thing to talk about. It is not a heavenly spirit that guides me through the valley of the shadow of death. It is not a lovers touch and kinky nibble of the ear in the middle of the night. Depression is agony. Utter and absolute agony. It is a boulder that crushes my bones endlessly. It is like the unquellable pain during childbirth. Yes: I suppose all that a depressed person ever wants to do - all that I want to do - is scream and push. Scream and push. Scream and push the depression out but it never leaves. ...Or if indeed it does, only by a little bit like body waste that one time I constipated.

When I was at my lowest, I got these fleeting moments of taking my own life. A ghost would whisper in my ear, 'yes, jump off that edge... take all those pills at once.... just a small cut to the wrist, it isn't that difficult'. This is coined l'appel du vide - the call of the void - and I am proud to say that there is a chapter with this title in my first novel. But long before this, long before it went into my book, all I wanted was for the pain to end. All I wanted was to take a deep breathe and watch as the ocean's surface washed over my head. All I wanted was to have endless, dreamless sleep. I wanted the suffering to end, but more than anything, I wanted someone else to suffer instead.

I would look at people and I would hate them. "Why are they so happy?" I would ask. "Can't they see that I am in pain? Why are they so blind? Why are they holding hands, smiling, laughing, doing lovey-dovey nonsense as if I am non-existent?" Please don't hate me, beloved reader. You see, depressed people are unable to say that they are depressed. In a way,they find it pointless to talk about it. I find it bearable enough to write about it now, but before, I was at the very center of that whirlpool. Its impossible gravity dragged me farther down, and I would look up above and see people going about their daily lives, happy and all that bull, and I would hate them from my heart of hearts.

But I thank my parents for they raised me well. If I was a psychopath, I would have committed a crime. I would not be here, typing away at the ruined keyboard of my desktop-laptop, ranting about depression. I would have been sentenced to a life in prison, and right now, I'd probably be in the arms of some rugged man with an ugly face and missing teeth, because he would have vowed to protect me and my beautiful face if I gave myself to him. Ew. I know. So gross and graphic. But my parents raised me well, and instead, here I am, hoping that someone will understand what it feels like to be depressed. Here I am escaping into a world that exists only at the far back of my warped mind, a world whose inhabitants suffer more than I do, but also where redemption was more assured and more absolute. Here I am, churning and churning and churning sense and nonsense, which you will probably read till the end, that is if you are still reading.

Oh well, I guess this is the end of this post, because I have run out of sense and nonsense to spout. This was only meant to introduce the single, most potent entity that catalyzed the creation of such a big, big world: depression. There will be more posts like this where I shall become as hopelessly vulnerable as this, not for my sake but for those who suffer, because the only way out is through. What about my novel characters, you ask. Oh don't worry. My babies suffer only as much as their 'godliness' can allow. Zen, Maia, Bast, Sonny, Lyon, Chandri, Jaimè, Red, Skyler, Nickolaj... they all have happy endings.

I still believe in happy endings so that's a good thing, right?