Darius the Great Is Not Okay (Darius the Great, #1)

by Adib Khorram

Mom always said she named me after Darius the Great, but I think she and Dad were setting themselves up for disappointment, naming me after a historical figure like that. I

Dad and I both took medication for depression.

The thing is, my grandfather’s presence in my life had been purely photonic up to that point. I didn’t know how to be sad about him dying.

I was only on Prozac for three months before Dr. Howell switched me, but it was pretty much the worst three months in the Search for the Right Medication.

As if salad would counteract the weight gain from my meds. As if lack of discipline was the root of all my problems. As if all the worry about my weight didn’t make me feel worse than I already did.

I hated that question: What are you depressed about? Because the answer was nothing. I had nothing to be depressed about. Nothing really bad had ever happened to me. I felt so inadequate.

“Nothing,” I said. “My brain just makes the wrong chemicals is all.”

For Fariba Bahrami, love was an opportunity, not a burden. I swallowed away the lump in my throat. “I love you, Mamou.”

“He is a good boy. Very nice. You should be friends with him.” I had never been ordered to befriend someone before.

I liked that I could be silent with Sohrab. That’s how I knew we really were going to be friends.

It made me anxious. Sometimes my heart would pound so fast I thought I was going to die. And then I would start sobbing for no reason.

I didn’t really want to die, anyway. I just wanted to slip into a black hole and never come out.

Dr. Howell said it was a side effect of my medications, and that a little weight gain was a small price to pay for emotional stability.

You can know things without them being said out loud. I knew Sohrab and I were going to be friends for life. Sometimes you can just tell that kind of thing.

Darius the Great was a diplomat and a conqueror. And I was just me.

I loved them. I loved how their eyelashes were long and dark and distinct, just like mine. And how their noses curved around a little bump in the middle, just like mine. And how their hair cow-licked in three separate places, just like mine.

Sohrab had no walls inside. I loved that about him.

What kind of name is Darius Grover Kellner? It was like I was destined to be a target.

Sohrab understood me. And I understood him too. And it was pretty much the most amazing thing ever.

My chest felt heavy, like someone had dropped a planet on me.

“No one wants me here.” “Everyone wants you here. We have a saying in Farsi. It translates ‘your place was empty.’ We say it when we miss somebody.” I sniffed. “Your place was empty before. But this is your family. You belong here.”

“No. I’m just messed up. My brain makes the wrong chemicals.”

How could I be a tourist in my own past?

My grandfather seemed so small and defeated then, bowed under the weight of history and the burdens of the future.

I wished Sohrab could be a kid again all the time.

The thing is, I never had a friend like Sohrab before. One who understood me without even trying. Who knew what it was like to be stuck on the outside because of one little thing that set you apart.

Dr. Howell likes to say that depression is anger turned inward. I had so much anger turned inward, I could have powered a warp core.

“Suicide isn’t the only way you can lose someone to depression.”

“You’re okay,” he murmured. “No. I’m not.” “I know.” He rubbed my back up and down. “It’s okay not to be okay.”

We sat around the table, drinking and laughing and smiling, but then we got kind of quiet. It was a nice kind of quiet. The kind you could wrap yourself up in like a blanket.

No matter what, though, depression doesn’t have to rule your life. If you’re living with depression, there is help out there.