.I smell.

.biieruesu.

When you are depressed, you smell. You smell like cheese, sweat, armpits, the pastrami on rye you ate last week and no matter how many times you shower, you always feel dirty. I smell like the subway, the exhaust pipes from yellow taxi-cabs with foreign drivers; I smell like someone without a life.

I live in a dumpy little apartment in Brooklyn. On some nights I hear gunshots, Italians trying to sway women with a nice, hearty “well, fuck you, then, Marie” and slammed car doors. I turn my headphones up and ignore the screams of my roommate. This is her third boyfriend this week. She yells the wrong name and he’s gone after he calls her everything but a ‘stupid slut’ (he saves that for when he slams the door). I hear her feet pad to the bathroom, and the back to her room. She’s still crying. I want to get out of the bed and console her but its taking everything I have just to be right now. I don’t know what it is about being depressed that takes your energy. There have been too many nights I’ve slept without being refreshed; too many days I’ve gone with being too tired to eat and never starved. It’s like I’ve been living a cursed life and everyone else has found the cure. My bed is the only safe place. Its 3 a.m. and I’ve got another day to suffer through.

---

My mother is glad to see me. She spreads hugs and pats my head and asks me how my job is and it takes a while to remember that I do have something that I need to do everyday. I’m a free-lance web designer with ‘bright, new eyes’ someone once told me. The thing is I haven’t worked in a while and I’ve got people asking for their money back. I say its fine, and I’m glad the four letter shovel ‘fine’ digs me out of every situation. I just wish I could tell the truth a little more.

The dinner she cooked is waiting for me at the table and my father and older brother are waiting for me. I squeeze my armpits closer together. I showered three times this morning, trying to get rid of the smell but I don’t think it’s worked. I feel dirty. My brother starts off on a story of his wife and daughter (they went to the zoo or something) and my father wrinkles his nose. I don’t know if it’s because of me or the sight of a little girl and her mother at the zoo. I think it’s me, to tell you the truth.

I shovel food into my mouth and the man sleeping in the bottom of my stomach is angry. I can only eat when It wants me to. My arms shake and I’m on my way to the subway, saying I’ve got important work to finish up. My mother’s eyes sparkle and she gives me something in a gift bag. I don’t bother to look in it, I need to get home.

---

The subway stairs have been swarmed with slow people and I try and bounce around them and settle my stomach. By the time I get to apartment, I can feel it coming. I barely reach the bathroom before I’m throwing up. My roommate’s standing by the door with a bag of groceries and a frown. She’s asking me if I’m okay. I just stumble back into my bed.

It’s around midnight when I wake up. The man in my stomach has relented; ready to consent to whatever I want to eat. I walk into the kitchen that is barely a kitchenette and start rummaging. On nights like this, I eat everything. Chips, ice cream with pickles, fried beef ramen, leftover spaghetti, ham and mustard, turkey and mayonnaise, tortillas dipped in whipped cream and cream cheese, yogurt and cottage cheese, apples dipped in queso, and my favorite: fruit roll-ups with chocolate chip cookies. My roommate looks at me in the floor of our kitchen that is really a large closet with blood shot eyes. I guess I should mention she’s a marijuana addict. She sits down next to me and starts to eat whatever I left behind. I hand her half of my cookie and she bites into it without pause.

“Why do people like us eat weird shit?” She looks over at me and I can’t answer her question, because we aren’t alike, and she continues. “Every depressed person I have known has cravings.” I look up at her. “So what are you on? Prozac?” I nod, and she grins. “Yeah, I used to be on that, but I don’t have insurance and weed is cheaper.”

I shook my head and she grabbed a bottle of Country French dressing and coats the cookies in them. I pick up one and examine it in the light. I’ve had worse but I guess different people have different taste buds.

I look over and ask, “Do I smell?”

“Of course you do, everyone does. Why? Can’t get clean?”

I shake my head. “Can’t get rid of the smell of failure.”

She nods and I think we have more in common than I thought.

I just wish I didn’t smell.