Refill

[JasonKane]

Interesting, brief story: Bill-- or Bob-- is painted as a non-entity; a man so nonexistent not even a dog can be bothered with him. He exists inside a pathetic fallacy; even the weather suffers.

Except, it isn't quite suffering. It's numbness. He seems to be beyond suffering; he's at the point where he can be clinical about his pain. Passion is out of the equation-- it's now just a cold puzzle of circumstances. "The music was dead the day of his first chuckle." Even his steps to right himself are pathetic and ineffective. His laughter is alien to himself; he thinks it's pain, I thnk, because that's maybe the only sensation with which he is familiar. His dreams are plain and reasonable, yet they still seem totally out of reach.

One detail I found to be magically precise: his tendency to commit random acts of "decent behavior" while neglecting himself. He'll change the water cooler because he sees himself possibly fitting into a community in some small way, contributing something; yet, he allows himself to bleed when cut. I don't think it's a passive-aggressive self-destructive impulse that leads him to neglect himself; it feels more like he's oblivious of himself. He has windows of clarity but otherwise he exists in a fog. He bleeds, he eats, he spills. He is what he is because he grew this way-- he didn't make himself into anything. He's purely biological, without interference from any outside source. He's an isolated human curiosity; it seems to me the pills are the only thing that shield him from it.

I am torn as to whether the title of this story refers to the unrealized prescription awaiting him or if it is a command. How does the narrator feel about Bob (or Bill)? He doesn't seem to hate him; he doesn't even really seem to judge him. He regards him like a looming casualty; his identity is on borrowed time without his pills: this is who he is. It's like there is one answer for Bob (or Bill), and that is to refill.

[Caleb]

Originally Posted by JasonKane

Interesting, brief story: Bill-- or Bob-- is painted as a non-entity; a man so nonexistent not even a dog can be bothered with him. He exists inside a pathetic fallacy; even the weather suffers.

I thought it interesting that the narration, which is a very close first person, treats this Bill or Bob as such, implying that it is the narrator who may be the pathetic one. My hope is that this treatment emphasizes Bill or Bob's depression, by allowing the reader to become a vicarious antagonist to Bill or Bob's depression.

Originally Posted by JasonKane

a cold puzzle of circumstances.

This is a beautiful description.

Originally Posted by JasonKane

I am torn as to whether the title of this story refers to the unrealized prescription awaiting him or if it is a command. How does the narrator feel about Bob (or Bill)? He doesn't seem to hate him; he doesn't even really seem to judge him. He regards him like a looming casualty; his identity is on borrowed time without his pills: this is who he is. It's like there is one answer for Bob (or Bill), and that is to refill.

I see the narrator as a device, honestly. Writers, I don't think, like to admit when they are using a character in this way, but here, it's true. Bill or Bob is such a non-entity that the story required a narrator/window/device with a bit of dickishness to really extrapolate on the subject.

Do you get the feeling of depression? Assuming you've never been clinically depressed, does Bill or Bob's approach to life allow any vicarious understanding of depression?

[JasonKane]

Originally Posted by Caleb

Do you get the feeling of depression? Assuming you've never been clinically depressed, does Bill or Bob's approach to life allow any vicarious understanding of depression?

At times, certainly-- definitely the changing of the water cooler bottle. That he clings to this tiny positive activity-- that it's worth mentioning-- smacks me in the face with unspoken desperation, and relays how far down the well he is: that this should be viewed as proactive, as positive, as some small evidence for self-validation.

At other times, I feel like he is almost a tourist, or like depression isn't even the true problem at hand-- he mentions his depression casually, talks about it semi-openly, even cracks little jokes about it. Maybe he's got a little bit of hypochondria in him. I associate depression more with characteristics like shame and self-loathing; people often hide this illness. That he seems willing to talk about it and interact so openly takes him to another level: it's almost as if he's not depressed so much as his life is simply depressing. But then, these spirals of withering self-reflection and poisoned assumptions (that he needs the pills to be happy enough to meet someone) characterize the illness as well, so it's a complex portrait. I've often secretly felt there was some distinction to be made between people who are depressed because of a chemical imbalance-- which affects their quality of life-- and people who just live terrible, dull lives, and suffer for it. I feel like Bill (or Bob) is skewing toward the latter.

But then again, the dog: I've got to imagine that's an exaggeration. Dogs don't brush people off; people might project that self-loathing onto them, however, which makes it a nice detail. There's another example where Bill does indeed feel authentically, miserably depressed.

Incidentally, for fun, here's the opening paragraph to David Foster Wallace's "The Depressed Person." I think it describes the illness pretty well in a staring-straight-at-the-oncoming-train type of way:

"The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing emotional pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing fact to its essential horror."

With this in mind, Bill (or Bob's) semi-pleasant exchange with the narrator on his illness takes on added dimensions, when you consider what's truly beneath it all, something perhaps only in remission. Can Bill (or Bob) contain it long enough to live some kind of life?

[Caleb]

Originally Posted by JasonKane

But then again, the dog: I've got to imagine that's an exaggeration. Dogs don't brush people off; people might project that self-loathing onto them, however, which makes it a nice detail. There's another example where Bill does indeed feel authentically, miserably depressed.

This is a very important detail, and I'm glad you referenced it. This tendency to project perceived negative feelings on others is common with depression. In the same way that Bill or Bob considers the doctor's comment about him being on the lowest dose as a declaration against his need for medication, the dog cannot be irrationally emotional toward Bill or Bob. Instead, every interaction has ultimate negative consequences, despite the intentions. Bill or Bob: "I can't go to the store today because it might be busy and then the checkout clerk will resent me, thus I will be ruining her day;" "I can't eat pancakes for dinner because if anyone finds out, they will feel justified by writing me off as a lazy person who can't cook, when really I just like pancakes;" "It doesn't matter that I like pancakes because the way people perceive me is the way I will be known. I guess to make me feel better I could cook something else. But then I'm just playing into what people feel should be expected, and blindly adhering to those types of cultural norms isn't fair to my mental health."

Every decision contains an infinite digression of negative potential.