Just (Part 3)

He was not like the other boys.

Instead of running around kicking balls at lunchtime, he much preferred to sit in a corner and read.

That was okay.

His closest friend was a girl—some of the other boys teased him for that, but she liked all the same things he did, and they had a lot of fun together. The other boys just didn’t understand their friendship.

That was okay, too.

He enjoyed school; he loved learning new things, and always did well when he enjoyed the subject. Sometimes his mind drifted off and he was distracted by little things—a fly on the wall, a cobweb in the corner; that single spot on the whiteboard that the teacher had failed to erase. Sometimes the teachers noticed his distraction, and sometimes they didn’t. He liked the kind ones, who coaxed him back to the real world gently. Some of them made fun of him having ‘drifted off to outer space’ again; that was okay. He let the words wash over him. He was just someone who disappeared inside of his head, instead of whispering to his peers. That was all.

He talked plenty to his best friend, though. He told her about how he liked to imagine a better world, where everyone knew it was okay to be different. That sometimes he felt sad about how mean people were to one another because, really, they actually weren’t so different after all.

In turn, she confided in him: she felt sad sometimes for no reason at all. She would just be sitting at her desk, trying to learn about the anatomical properties of Hydrogen or the population of China and suddenly she’d be overcome by how meaningless everything was. She confessed that some days she didn’t even want to get out of bed. She was certain there was something wrong with her, and threw out words like ‘freak’ and ‘psycho’.

He understood, though. An idea formed in his mind.

A man soon came to their school to give a talk on depression—this man was the boy’s father. He was a psychologist who helped people with mental illnesses.

He spoke about what it felt like to be sad all the time, and how depression leaked into daily life unexpectedly. How it made you feel like you were different to everyone else, like that was a bad thing. But it wasn’t really – the world was full of different people, and that was just as it should be. Not only that, depression was actually pretty common: for every eight boys in the room, one would experience it. One in six, for the girls.

The boy saw his friend’s eyes glimmer with tears, and he grasped her hand and whispered, ‘it’s okay. You’re going to be okay.’ His father, at the front, continued to speak.

He began to tell them a story.

Once, there had been a man with a deep sadness in his heart.

He had a job he loved, a wife he adored; even a dog.

Still, he was sad.

As the man spoke, the boy felt his own tears prickle, and his heart swelled with pride. He’d heard this story many times. It was a story of sadness, and a man too afraid of being different to realise that he needed help. It was a story of tragedy, of fear, and of darkness.

But it was also a story of light, and freedom.

At the end, the man rolled up his sleeves to bare his arms. They all saw the thick scars traced there, so at odds with the smile on the man’s face. Was it truly possible this was the same man from the story?

The boy looked at his friend again, whose tears now coursed freely down her cheeks, and he repeated his words with a knowing smile.

‘You’re going to be okay.’

FIN