April 4th, 2009

8-9-08

Have you ever tried to sum up your life in a matter of words? Emphatic. Dull. Hypothetically functional. Writer. Overtly incorrect. Tolerable in certain circles. Case study. Or maybe a few more, because that’s just not enough? Sociologist. Pain in the ass. Underachiever. Overachiever. Part-time megalomaniac and humanitarian. Economist. Current statistic and future owner of bumper stickers. Believer of the untenable. Realist. Analytical. Invasive. Enemy of the enemy. Only to realize that it doesn’t work at all?

Cecilia Lind’s first encounter of depression occurred approximately 45 seconds after her excitable mother pushed Cecilia’s stroller up to the metal bar in front of the tiger cage at the Berlin Zoo.  Her mother, who changed her name from Nancy to Anastasia during college for reasons undisclosed yet seemingly obvious, had always taken great joy in telling everyone about the empathetic understanding and superior reasoning skills that Cecilia possessed at such a young age. Anastasia’s tendency to talk about Cecilia is the key reason why she failed to recognize her daughter’s horror: while Cecilia entered a state of quiet panic, Anastasia was telling he uninterested mother of a singing toddler that her little girl could sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star in three Romantic languages, English, and German.

Cecelia refused to leave the house for one week following her first visit to the zoo. On the rare occasion that one of her parents managed to get her to stay in her stroller after forcibly removing her from her bedroom in order to go to the playground, Cecilia would hide in the structure beneath the slide and scoot back and forth. At age 15, whenever the event played out in her thoughts, Cecilia couldn’t explain why she forced herself to live like the caged tiger, nor could she explain why she stopped. Cecilia Lind’s first encounter of depression occurred when she realized she was every bit as imprisoned as the caged animal when she roamed free.