Somewhere, a woman was crying. She sat in her open window, a fire escape to catch her should she fall or try something ill-advisedly dramatic. Her apartment was at the top of a high-rise; she was looking out, regally, over the whole city—a major, bustling one. Her blurry eyes smudged that enviable view to non-distinct wells of colored light. I don’t know the cause of her suffering; if I did, I wouldn’t have a story to tell you.
In her hand there was a tissue, balled and unused. She held it close for when she needed it. Until then, she found pleasure in letting her emotions run down her face, drain out of her until she was empty of them. Only then, when she felt happier, like a different person entirely, did she open her hand and unfold the tissue—careful not to rip it—and sop up all that excised suffering. Then, as precisely as if it were a rite that she had been raised to know and honor, she extended the grief-sodden object between the index finger and thumb of her right hand and opened them, allowing it to flutter away into the night. Watching it dip and soar, she felt well. She was well. Reborn, even. The point of this story isn’t to make you concerned for this woman. You can trust me that she’s mostly doing fine.
The tissue, though, laden with sorrow, was a different matter.
It flew over congested streets full of frustrated, angry people, over businesses and residential buildings until it finally touched ground under a bench in a park. (Yes, this was that city you were thinking of, the one with the famous park). It caught on the wrought iron leg of the bench and hung there for several days, drying out, the emotion that swelled its fibers shrinking and hardening into something crunchy and awful looking.
A man, Antwan was his name, took a seat on that bench. He didn’t notice the tissue because it was only a tissue, human detritus that appeared unremarkable among the thousands of similar pieces of waste that he had passed on his walk to the bench. Each of these pieces also had a story, but mostly tales of peckish and, perhaps, somewhat inconsiderate people. They would bore you.
The tissue was different, unbeknownst to Antwan.
He had felt fine when he’d entered the park—not happy or boisterous, but, still, objectively fine. It was his lunch break, and he had packed leftovers of his favorite cold noodle dish. Once he sat down, though, he found that he was no longer hungry. How could one eat with so much suffering in the world? His thoughts turned suddenly to famine and genocide and poverty and drought and all the various isms that humankind has been inflicting on itself since our long-ago trudge out of the primordial soup. He thought of his children and how long it had been since they had called him, how long it had been since he had called his own mother. He was a bad father, a bad son, a bad citizen. He walked back to work early, dejected. No sooner had he sat down in his cubicle, than his stomach growled, and he wished he hadn’t emptied his Tupperware of noodles into a trash receptacle.
In time, the tissue was discovered by a sparrow that was hunting for nesting materials in the park’s litter. Sparrows, the same as any bird, have no tendency toward depression, which is why you have never seen a bird of any kind suffering from ennui. As industriously as if it were dealing with any leaf or twig or candy bar wrapper, the sparrow did its artisan work on the tissue, tearing and weaving it into its nursery bowl. It raised five healthy babies in the nest, all of them coolly ignorant of the tissue’s pregnant sadness.
By the time the babies abandoned the nest, the tissue had been shredded by five bored little beaks and ten taloned feet as they groped for purchase to better endure the violent and chaotic process of growing up. The tissue fragments softened each time it rained and then hardened and further shriveled as the sun baked them dry again. Over time, the fragments atomized and blew away in a stiff fall breeze, and that’s where I encountered them.
I was thirteen and struggling to grow up myself. I didn’t recognize the encounter at first; by then the tissue had exploded into the realm of the microscopic. I breathed fragments of it deep into me though. Most of them, at the very least—possibly all of them. They got into my own tissue and settled there, and that’s why I’m sometimes sad for long stretches but unable to give a name to that sadness when you ask me. I don’t know the pain of the woman in the high-rise, so I can’t say for sure what to call it now that it’s mine.
I’m explaining this to you the best way I know how so that you can better understand me. They make pills now, dozens of different kinds, which can find and pluck out those microscopic fragments from a body, but, because the name of the sadness is unknown, it’s down to trial and error. I’m on my third trial now, and there’s been no change yet. I’m staying optimistic, though.
I would like us to make a pact—I’ll keep trying for as long as you can remain patient with me. If we can just stay the course together, even when it gets hard, we’ll beat this thing. I’m confident we will. Someday.
