Eat, Pray, Love

sion because we’re so supersensitive and special?) Was it evolutionary? (Do I carry in me the
residual panic that comes after millennia of my species’ attempting to survive a brutal world?)
Was it karmic? (Are all these spasms of grief just the consequences of bad behavior in previ-
ous lifetimes, the last obstacles before liberation?) Was it hormonal? Dietary? Philosophical?
Seasonal? Environmental? Was I tapping into a universal yearning for God? Did I have a
chemical imbalance? Or did I just need to get laid?
What a large number of factors constitute a single human being! How very many layers
we operate on, and how very many influences we receive from our minds, our bodies, our his-
tories, our families, our cities, our souls and our lunches! I came to feel that my depression
was probably some ever-shifting assortment of all those factors, and probably also included
some stuff I couldn’t name or claim. So I faced the fight at every level. I bought all those em-
barrassingly titled self-help books (always being certain to wrap up the books in the latest is-
sue of Hustler, so that strangers wouldn’t know what I was really reading). I commenced to
getting professional help with a therapist who was as kind as she was insightful. I prayed liked
a novice nun. I stopped eating meat (for a short time, anyway) after someone told me that I
was “eating the fear of the animal at the moment of its death.” Some spacey new age mas-
sage therapist told me I should wear orange-colored panties, to rebalance my sexual chakras,
and, brother—I actually did it. I drank enough of that damn Saint-John’s-wort tea to cheer up
whole a Russian gulag, to no noticeable effect. I exercised. I exposed myself to the uplifting
arts and carefully protected myself from sad movies, books and songs (if anyone even men-
tioned the words Leonard and Cohen in the same sentence, I would have to leave the room).
I tried so hard to fight the endless sobbing. I remember asking myself one night, while I
was curled up in the same old corner of my same old couch in tears yet again over the same
old repetition of sorrowful thoughts, “Is there anything about this scene you can change, Liz?”
And all I could think to do was stand up, while still sobbing, and try to balance on one foot in
the middle of my living room. Just to prove that—while I couldn’t stop the tears or change my
dismal interior dialogue—I was not yet totally out of control: at least I could cry hysterically
while balanced on one foot. Hey, it was a start.
I crossed the street to walk in the sunshine. I leaned on my support network, cherishing
my family and cultivating my most enlightening friendships. And when those officious wo-
men’s magazines kept telling me that my low self-esteem wasn’t helping depression matters
at all, I got myself a pretty haircut, bought some fancy makeup and a nice dress. (When a
friend complimented my new look, all I could say, grimly, was, “Operation Self-Esteem—Day
Fucking One.”)
The last thing I tried, after about two years of fighting this sorrow, was medication. If I may
impose my opinions here, I think it should always be the last thing you try. For me, the de-