"Greg Egan - Reasons To Be Cheerful" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

theory, but she declined to refer me to a neurologist when my only symptoms were psychological: blood
and urine tests showed none of the standard markers for clinical depression.

The windows of clarity grew shorter. I found myself spending more and more of each day in bed, staring
out across the darkened room. My despair was so monotonous, and so utterly disconnected from
anything real, that to some degree it was blunted by its own absurdity: no one I loved had just been
slaughtered, the cancer had almost certainly been defeated, and I could still grasp the difference between
what I was feeling and the unarguable logic of real grief, or real fear.

But I had no way of casting off the gloom and feeling what I wanted to feel. My only freedom came
down to a choice between hunting for reasons to justify my sadnessтАФdeluding myself that it was my
own, perfectly natural response to some contrived litany of misfortunesтАФor disowning it as something
alien, imposed from without, trapping me inside an emotional shell as useless and unresponsive as a
paralyzed body.

My father never accused me of weakness and ingratitude; he just silently withdrew from my life. My
mother kept trying to get through to me, to comfort or provoke me, but it reached the point where I
could barely squeeze her hand in reply. I wasn't literally paralyzed or blind, speechless or feeble-minded.
But all the brightly lit worlds I'd once inhabitedтАФphysical and virtual, real and imaginary, intellectual and
emotionalтАФhad become invisible, and impenetrable. Buried in fog. Buried in shit. Buried in ashes.

By the time I was admitted to a neurological ward, the dead regions of my brain were clearly visible on
an MRI scan. But it was unlikely that anything could have halted the process even if it had been
diagnosed sooner.

And it was certain that no one had the power to reach into my skull and restore the machinery of
happiness.

2

The alarm woke me at ten, but it took me another three hours to summon up the energy to move. I threw
off the sheet and sat on the side of the bed, muttering half-hearted obscenities, trying to get past the
inescapable conclusion that I shouldn't have bothered. Whatever pinnacles of achievement I scaled today
(managing not only to go shopping, but to buy something other than a frozen meal) and whatever
monumental good fortune befell me (the insurance company depositing my allowance before the rent was
due) I'd wake up tomorrow feeling exactly the same.

Nothing helps, nothing changes. Four words said it all. But I'd accepted that long ago; there was
nothing left to be disappointed about. And I had no reason to sit here lamenting the bleeding obvious for
the thousandth time.

Right?

Fuck it. Just keep moving.

I swallowed my тАЬmorningтАЭ medication, the six capsules I'd put out on the bedside table the night before,
then went into the bathroom and urinated a bright yellow stream consisting mainly of the last dose's
metabolites. No antidepressant in the world could send me to Prozac Heaven, but this shit kept my
dopamine and serotonin levels high enough to rescue me from total catatoniaтАФfrom liquid food, bedpans
and sponge baths.