The Depressed Person
By David Foster Wallace, first published in Harper's Magazine
A depressed woman drives her friends and therapist crazy, going ceaselessly on about the childhood trauma she incurred during her parents’ divorce settlings.
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A depressed woman cannot get over the trauma that she underwent when her parents were getting divorced during her childhood. They fought over everything, and each refused to pay for her orthodontic treatments for a long time out of the insistence that the other should have to do it. To get over her trauma, the depressed woman talks to her therapist and her friends, who she worries are getting sick of her. She begs her friends to speak up if they get bored, but they never do, but the depressed woman is still sure that they are getting tired of her. When the depressed woman’s therapist kills herself, she further spirals. She cannot cope with the absence of her therapist in her life, so she spends more hours than ever making long-distance phone calls to her friends. She implores her friends to speak about if they’re annoyed. Finally, one friend, a terminally ill woman does, and she unleashes on the depressed woman: calling her selfish, claiming that the only reason that the depressed woman cares about the therapist’s death is because she can no longer rant to her, and confessing that being her friend is agonizing. The depressed woman listens, wondering how she’ll put into words the long list of grievances she’s hearing on the other end of the phone.
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