Do you want to know what Depression is, Marla?

"Do you want to know what depression is, Marla? Depression is not the same as disappointment. Depression is not what happens to an intelligent woman who was intellectually aware her relationship with another was coming to an end. In your case, both you and Franca knew the relationship was coming to its end."

"You are telling me that one cannot be depressed due to disappointment?"

"Marla, I am not saying that. I am saying that you spend your life jumping from small pools to bigger pools, from big pools to the ocean, hoping to find wetter water. You set yourself up for disappointment. Water is not wetter in larger bodies of water. You jump into the sea, and you realize you are just as wet as you were in the small pool and you are disappointed the water is not wetter. You are not depressed; you are just disappointed. If you want to know what true depression is, I will tell you."

"I am listening, Mister."

"Depression is repeatedly hearing your mother tell the story to anybody who will listen about how disappointed she was when after having two daughters; her third child was a boy. Depression is suffering through hearing her repeat the story of her disappointment at every family gathering. Depression is a lifetime of being forced to hear your mother tell others that her daughters are like her, but her son is "like his father,"; who she once loved and then hated. Depression is hearing your father tell you, his son, that you don't look like him, but your mother, who he once loved but then felt nothing but a visceral hatred. Depression is having a father who is more attracted to the neon light that stares at him from across the barstool than he is to the light that is inside of you, his son. Depression is the knowledge that no matter how bright that light within you may shine, it will never be as bright, as attractive as the glow of the neon signs of a tavern. Depression is hearing your mother repeat time and time how her pregnancy with her first two children, her precious daughters, had little impact on her body, but it was you, the son, who did so much damage. Depression is having your parents recognize you in public and ignore you in private. Depression is being a teenager and meeting a girl you can never touch, never hold in your arms. Depression is finding yourself in love with somebody for your entire life, and that person doesn't know you love her".

"You need to forgive."

"I have forgiven, I have forgiven everybody, Marla."

"Yet you still feel the hurt caused by others."

"Forgiveness is not about laying your blessing over the hurt caused by others. Rather it underlines and highlights the hurt caused by others. I forgive because I don't want to be weighed down by it, don't want to have it dictate my self-image, or hinder future happiness. It is an act of self-empowerment. Through forgiveness of others, even those who do not deserve it, I rise above them and stand superior to them."

"You stand superior to them? That is fiction, fantasy. Tell that story elsewhere, Tommaso."

"Is it fiction, or is it fantasy? What do you believe it is, Marla?"

"What is the difference?"

"Marla, fiction is meant to tell the truth about the world. Fantasy tells the truth about the person who is telling the fantasy. I enjoy reading novels. Novels are fiction; authors seek to tell truths about the world. I don't read fantasy stories; I am not interested in the person who has a fantasy. The human truths Shakespeare writes of in his fiction are my interest. I am not interested in Shakespeare's fantasies, just the truths about which he wrote."