I Don't Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me)
Lyra closed her eyes and sunk back into the couch, the lyrics of the song washing over her. The singer's gravelly voice was hers, his experiences put into verse hers, his pain hers. She imagined herself traveling, wandering, the loneliness of not having a friend in the world. Nopony to call family, no place to call home. Herself as company, herself and whatever lay in her saddlebags. She tried to see all the faces the singer was now describing, the tears on them as he (or she, because they were the same) told a sad, sad tale of a wanderer, and out of pity they tossed that lonely wanderer a few bits, and the wanderer thanked them and walked off into the night and never allowed himself to cry. Herself.
Loneliness was sad. Nopony should be lonely, Lyra thought along with the refrain, but some are all the same. But she wasn't alone. Well, she was now, sitting in the living room and listening to sad music, but in life she wasn't. She had lots of friends, and she had Bon Bon. She might be pretty lonely without her. Maybe even if she'd never met her. But she couldn't imagine what that would be like, that was impossible. She could kind of get a little glimmer of what it might be like if she lost Bon Bon somehow, but thinking about just how she might lose her (what a stupid euphemism, you don't just lose a pony like they're an odd sock or something) led to wanting to think about anything else, so all she could say with any certainty was that it would be sad. Probably.
She was happy to have Bon Bon in her life.
Hoofsteps on the stairs made creaks louder than the stereo. Lyra opened her eyes and sat forward and turned the volume down. Recently, music had been giving Bon Bon a headache. Well, she had been saying it was giving her headaches, anyway.
"Morning, Bonnie," she said, leading over the back of the couch.
Bon Bon stopped and looked at her. It wasn't harsh enough to be a glare. Long enough, maybe.
Quietly, the song spoke about wandrin' in the rain.
"Will you turn that maudlin junk off?" Bon Bon asked. "I hate all this sad music." She continued into the kitchen, her shoulders slightly hunched, her head looking heavy.
"Sure. Yeah, I was just... sure. Want me to put on something else? Something upbeat?"
"I want you to turn it off," came the reply from the kitchen.
Turn it off. Sure. That could work too. Lyra lifted the needle off the record. The only sound left was Bon Bon in the kitchen making breakfast. It sounded like cereal. Again.
Silence was awkward. Lyra loved music, so it was only natural silence was awkward. She had a huge record collection. Massive. Probably the biggest in Equestria. Well, maybe not. Definitely the biggest in Ponyville. Maybe. It was pretty big, anyway. She listened to music all the time and when she couldn't she hummed, and when she was told to be quiet she silently mouthed the lyrics and didn't care how many ponies looked at her funny. She knew songs for every occasion, for things that were funny and things that were sad and things that were strange. Every situation in life, you could find a song for it. She processed everything in songs.
She had told Bon Bon about her cutie mark when they had first met--she had correctly identified the instrument as a lyre, which not many ponies did on their first try--that it was really about songs. Her favorite story had been the one about Orpheus, and how he went down into the lowest depths of Tartarus to bring back the pony he loved. He fought every hideous monster there was between him and her, and what did he bring to fight with? Not magic. Not a sword. He brought an instrument. He brought a lyre, and with that he went through the gates of Tartarus and came back alive. That was the power of music. Songs could do anything.
Anything except break through to Bon Bon, it seemed. First she'd been in the dumps. Then it was a funk. Now there was a wall built up around her, and no matter what Lyra did she couldn't find a way around it. She couldn't even climb over it, let alone begin to tear it down. She'd listened to every sad song she knew, and still she didn't understand what was making Bon Bon depressed.
She'd find it eventually.
Peering into the kitchen, Lyra saw Bon Bon listlessly munching on a bowl of cereal. The box was still on the table. So was the milk. She'd put them away. Eventually. Or Lyra would do it. Or she wouldn't, because Bon Bon might snap at her for doing things before she had a chance to do them, she was just about to put them away, you're always doing things like this, what, you don't think I'm capable of putting away the milk, ugh?
Lyra was just trying to be helpful. But maybe helpful right now was just staying quiet. She sat across the table from Bon Bon, who didn't look up at her.
Munch. Munch. Munch.
No, I've already had breakfast, Lyra thought. I mean, you probably saw the dishes on the sink. Or if you didn't, you probably figured that since I've been up for an hour and a half already that I didn't want to wait for you, and I was thinking of coming back upstairs to see if you'd fallen back asleep but you know there'd be no point in that because you know how the stairs creak and we both know you were lying awake in bed and staring at the wall, so I just had my breakfast alone and I listened to some sad songs alone because I really, really, really want to know what's wrong with you.
Munch. Munch. Munch.
Lyra hated silence.
"So," she ventured, "how are you this morning?"
"Fine," Bon Bon mumbled around a mouthful of cereal.
"Are you sure you're fine?"
"Yes. I'm sure. I'm fine."
"You don't look fine..."
Bon Bon raised her head. Now she was glaring at her. "I'm fine," she said through gritted teeth. "Will you just let me eat, please?"
Lyra tapped on the table with her hoof. She was looking at the scratches there, the nicks and dents that a table accrues over many years of being in a cook's kitchen. Except when was the last time Bon Bon cooked something? "Are you sure--" she started.
Bon Bon slammed her hoof on the table, cutting her off. The bowl rattled. There might be another dent in it now. "Yes. I'm sure. I'm not going to the doctor. Because I am fine."
"You're not fine." Lyra could feel her voice getting loud. Good. She hated silence. "The doctor might--"
"No!" Bon Bon stood up with such force that her chair toppled backwards. "No doctors, no pills! I don't want to be somepony who isn't me!"
"You're already somepony who isn't you!" Lyra shouted at her.
The silence that followed was deafening. It was the worst silence yet.
Bon Bon looked like Lyra had just slapped her, all the argument stunned out of her. And then the first crack appeared. Her face crumpled. The wall fell. The dam burst. She slumped over the table and she started crying, and Lyra was by her side and holding her. Listening to Bon Bon cry was sad, but it was better than silence.
Lyra told her it was alright, that it would all be alright, that they would be okay, to let it out, it's good to let it out, and when she had stopped Lyra got her tissues, and when she had used those Lyra kissed her and she almost cried again, and when Lyra asked if Bon Bon would see a doctor she agreed, and when Lyra asked if she wanted her to come with her, Bon Bon pressed her cheek against Lyra's cheek and whispered, "I think that would be for the best."
-/-
The next morning, Lyra and Bon Bon sat at the kitchen table again. An opaque jar sat between them.
"I feel like I'm about to throw up," Bon Bon said.
"That's just nerves. You'll be fine."
"The doctor said nausea was a possible side-effect."
"You haven't taken any of the pills yet, Bonnie."
Bon Bon looked at her. "I know that. I hate being nauseous, is all."
Lyra smiled at her. "It'll be fine. If you throw up, I'll hold your mane."
Bon Bon smiled back. Lyra knew that smile. It was a little sarcastic, but it was mostly on the level. It was her what-are-we-going-to-do-with-you smile. She hadn't seen it in a while. It was good to have it back.
"Lyra," Bon Bon said, "my mane isn't long enough that you'd need to do that."
"Then I'll hold your hoof or whatever. Less stalling, more swallowing."
Bon Bon nudged the tiny pill sitting in front of her. She picked it up and dry-swallowed it. "There," she said, "are you happy?"
"Are you?"
"Ha ha."
"But," Lyra said, reaching across the table to take Bon Bon's hooves, "I'm with you in this. Like Orpheus."
Bon Bon let out a sigh. "...Do you know what bothers me about that story, Lyra?"
She didn't. She'd told it for years and as far as she knew, Bon Bon had no problem with it. She shook her head.
"Eurydice doesn't make it out with him. She gets out in the sunlight and she vanishes." She swallowed, and blinked. "He went to all that work, and still he couldn't save her."
"See, there's a reason I don't leave that part in, when I tell it."
Bon Bon smiled at her with a smile Lyra had never seen. It was sad. Piteous. It was Bon Bon trying not to cry.
"But," Lyra added in a soft voice, "that's because Orpheus didn't listen to the instructions. He didn't do everything he was meant to do. If he'd done it right, he would have kept Eurydice with him."
She squeezed Bon Bon's hoof, and looked into her eyes.
"Make me understand it. Make me understand why you're sad."
Bon Bon closed her eyes and took and deep breath. She sucked her lips between her teeth, and bit. She swallowed again. She looked like she was eating down the tears before she could ruin what she wanted to say.
Finally, she opened her eyes, and she spoke.
"It's not being sad. Being sad means that you're feeling, feeling something, even if it's not nice. Depression is not feeling anything. There's no reason to do anything, no reason to take joy in anything, but there's no reason to be upset, either. There's just nothing. And so you have no motivation and no energy for anything. Nothing will change.
"It's not about anything. It doesn't come from anywhere, the doctor said. It's a disease, like the flu or insomnia, but it's subtle, so you don't know there's something wrong until it's really bad. First maybe you beat yourself up a little bit over a mistake you make or something dumb you said where other ponies would just shrug it off. Then you remember all the other times you said the wrong thing, and you're asking yourself, how are you so stupid? What's wrong with you? So you keep a really close eye on what you say, because you don't want to make a fool of yourself again, but you do because that's only natural, and you remember everything dumb you've ever said again and it all comes back to you just how shameful everypony else must think you are. So you just end up talking less and less, adding less to the conversation, only piping up when you're completely sure what you're going to say is worthwhile. And you miss your chance sometimes, and you beat yourself up later in your head over that, too.
"So you just end up hanging out with your friends less and less. You have something to do. You don't feel like it this week. You say you'll be there but instead you just stay home. And that gives you plenty of time to think. You think about how you're being a terrible friend, how you should go out and see everypony, but you don't want to face them after having not seen them for so long and you don't have the energy to go out and be in a group and that just makes you feel worse. A better pony would have the energy to do it. A better pony wouldn't be scared of something stupid like her friends. You must be terrible. You're terrible at everything. You should get up and stop being so terrible at life. But you don't. And that's how you know you're terrible.
"But you have to go and do things out in the world, eventually. So you lie about how you're doing. You pretend. You don't want to bother other ponies with your problems, because it's not like it's a real problem. It's just something you made up for yourself. You made up how you constantly feel awful, when there are ponies in the world with actual problems. That's how terrible you are. You lie and say you're alright but that takes away from the energy you have, keeping up the lie. It's like being at the beach when the tide comes in. First it's just waves going back and forth, and then all of a sudden, where did the beach go? Now it's all water. Where did I go? Now it's just depression. Just this terrible pony who's no good at anything.
"And that's when you start thinking, maybe the world doesn't need me in it. Maybe--"
Lyra squeezed Bon Bon's hoof, hard. She didn't need to hear that part. That was a part she understood. I hurt so much I want to die. You could find songs about that. She hadn't known Bon Bon was hurting that much. She blinked, squeezed her eyes shut, and her vision blurred.
"You're a good pony," she told Bon Bon. "You're a good pony and you're not terrible and you're good at so many things."
Bon Bon sighed, a deep shuddering breath. "I know that. But it's hard to remember. It's a liar. That's what the doctor called it, the lying disease. First the lies are small, so small they're more misdirection, hiding the truth from yourself, but they get so big until you can't help but believe them."
"I don't believe them." Lyra reached to kiss Bon Bon's hoof. "You're a great pony, you're not terrible, and I love you. I love you so much."
Bon Bon squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her face into Lyra's hooves. She was trying to say something, but it got lost in tears. Lyra knew it was I love you, too.
-/-
A couple of days after, Lyra woke to an empty bed.
She tried to cautiously sneak down the stairs, but the creak gave her away.
"Hey, you're up," Bon Bon called.
It was warm in the kitchen, warm and cozy and smelling of food. The oven was on. The oven hadn't been on in weeks. Bon Bon had a spread of mixing bowls and cutting boards and jars of little bits of preserved this and that, olives and tomatoes and things. Those had come from the basement. Had Bon Bon been into the basement to get all this stuff? How long had she been awake?
"I was thinking last night about focaccia, about how I hadn't had foccacia in forever, and when I got up I more or less had everything to make some. I improvised a little, but it should be alright. You wanna wait for it to cook? Should be like twenty minutes if you want to eat it while it's still too warm. I might do that."
Lyra looked at her. Her apron was covered in flour. There was even a little in her mane. She darted around the kitchen like a bee at the start of spring. Here there were eggs that needed to be stirred. Here something needed spices. There was a thing under a towel that needed to be checked on. It looked like Lyra was cooking three Heart's Warming dinners at once.
"What's the rest of this stuff?" she asked.
"Oh, this and that. I dunno, I felt like baking today. We've got enough room to store it all. Or we'll just eat it, whatever."
A smile crossed Lyra's face. "Hey, do you want me to put some music on?"
Bon Bon turned around, and she gave her a huge grin. "Yes. Yes I do. Do that. Turn it up loud. Wake the neighbors. Make it something you can dance to."
Music you could dance to. Lyra knew plenty of songs for that.
Author's Note
"I Don't Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me)" is a song by Marilyn Manson, that authority on conformity.
I've had the germ of this story waiting for a while, and here it is stripped to its base elements and hitched to the bandwagon, as it were. Fiction on depression and suicide often presents only two options - live in pain or escape with death - and while it can feel like those are the only choices when you're in the dark, there is always a third: get help. See a doctor. Talk to your friends, your family, an anonymous person on the Internet who also has struggled with depression. In some ways, they're the best, because we know what you're going through. We know how hopeless it can all seem, but we're still here, and we want you to stay here, too. Some people need a therapist, some a friend, some a shoulder to cry on, some chemicals to make them not a different person but the person they feel they should be. There is no one solution, just like there is no one person with depression. All are, in their own way, unique, and if we all want to help, we should do more talking about it instead of staying silent, and when the silent among us are ready to speak up, we listen.
Public service announcement over. Back to your regular horsewords now.
