Karma Debt Collection and Receipt

There is a thinking among more and more doctors and scientists that depression is related to your ability to remember. The clearer and more distinct the memories filling the spaces behind your eyes and ears become, the harder to carry on with the rest of the memories sure to be made along the way.

“Let’s have another round of shots for that guy!”

“Dude! That was crazy! You’re so fucking crazy!”

“Bartender! Mas, por favor!”

That’s David and Stephen. We went to High School together and they and others constantly conjure days I’d like to lose.

It was Christmas and that meant the college brats were back in town. That meant all of those guys were back in town reminding me of what I had and had not done with my life.

Everything happened so fast. Shots and women made towers of pleasure in my mind and pants and before I knew it, I was throwing up blood, laughing at a man who clearly punched like a girl—like the girl he was pounding my skull about.

I couldn’t feel a thing.

With blood and bone, I was paying a karma debt collector for every punch that ever missed me, every one I ever knocked unconscious, every lie I ever got away with, every rank and sour deed I was ever responsible for in a town too small for sins that big.

FWAP! That struck for that time I slept with the bride on the night before her wedding.

FWOP! Another for promises that spun out empty.

PLAP-TAPF!! Two for taking best friends to the same bed.

PFT! And that’s for stealing my girl!

Bled some more for those ribs I broke, that nose I cracked, that scar I made, those wounds I reopened and there’s a scar of my own just for being born.

I was still laughing when he walked away exhausted. That punishment was payment but the collector never stops until he’s paid in full. Now there is a debt owed me.

I have the scar to prove it. I see it every time I look at my reflection. The memory stays alive that way. It keeps me going.

I am not depressed. I am alive.