Outside the store, there are billboards of gaming, women, and booze. This is Las Vegas, baby! But none of us are doing anything that needs to “stay here” at all. Remington is kicking ass at the gym, and Coach has actually upped his training hours.
He’s packing on more muscle and getting more ripped, and the entire team agrees that Scorpion deserves nothing but Riptide’s finest at this season’s final. So my beast has been training nine hours while I indulge in a bit of extra sleep in the mornings and then join him at the gym before he’s done. He’s eating protein like mad, and Coach has put him on L-glutamine shakes to preserve muscle mass, so now I’m also helping Diane choose the best foods for his body and mind.
Pete says if Scorpion wants to f**k with his mind again, we must make sure Remy sleeps right, exercises right, and eats right—so that he’s as stable as possible. Most especially he needs lots of omega-3 fats.
Today, we get so many fresh goods for my T. rex, that Diane and I need two carts. We stay all along the edges of the store buying fruits, vegetables, the best cheeses, dark chocolate, sprouted grains, and nuts. Then we head to the protein part and order fresh Alaskan king salmon, king among fish and as toxin free as fish hopefully get.
While we wait for several pounds of fish to be packaged, I inspect one of the lovely heads of broccoli we’ve got in one of our carts. I used to call them “little trees” and Melanie called them “green things,” which was what she called anything green—the only reason she ate veggies was because of the color. Mel loves color.
“My grandmother taught me all I know about food. She cured my grandfather’s depression with diet,” Diane tells me.
We order some wild-caught shrimp as well, and anything else that is wild caught and fresh, and the counter guy packs it all up.
“I had depression once,” I suddenly tell her, my eye on one dead fish eye. “It’s not a fun thing to have.”
“You? Brooke, I could never tell looking at you. Did something happen to bring it on?”
“I guess my life changed before I was ready for it to.”
I shrug and smile sadly at her. “I couldn’t believe the things that went through my head in those days,” I admit. “It all seemed so pointless. So dreary. It’s hard to think anyone can get out of that alone.”
“How did you?” she presses.
“I don’t know, I think a small part of me realized I was not my brain. It’s just another organ, like our kidneys or our livers.”
She’s perfectly sober, nodding in understanding, so I add, even though it sounds crazy, “My brain wanted me to die, but in some surreal way, I could feel my soul fighting it.”
Sometimes I can’t stop thinking and comparing: While I was depressed once in my life, for about two months, Remington goes through it continually, cycling again and again, rising and falling. Anyone who goes through this is a warrior. So are their loved ones, who fight with them. I swear, Remington’s soul is so strong . . . I know that when he sinks into the dark vortex, it’s his soul that conquers it. All that simmering energy inside him is too powerful not to rise back up. Like a . . . riptide.
“How did that feel?” Diane whispers as the man finally packs us several bags of ice.
“You know how you get any visual or audible stimulus, or when you touch something, your brain dictates a response to this sensual stimuli,” I tell her. “I see you, and my brain immediately sends out a response at the sight of you, which in me is comfort and happiness. But in my depression, I saw things, normal things, and the responses my brain would fling out would not match. It was crazy.”
“It sounds crazy!” she agrees.
I smile and we take the ice the man offers, say thank you, and push our carts down the lane to the deli meat and cheeses. I add, “The way I see it is as if our brains were the doctors, and the adrenals are the pharmacies that fill up the prescriptions. You could see a commercial with laughing children, and an unbalanced mind will quickly prescribe anxiety and tears over laughing children. Even if it logically makes no sense—it doesn’t matter. That’s the prescription your body was given.”
“I’m really sorry, Brooke. I’d never really thought about what all that must be like.”
We add some organic goat cheese to our carts, some coconut milk, almond milk, and whole milk. “They put me on pills, but it worsened pretty bad. The only thing that got me out of it was my family and Melanie, exercise and sun.”
“I know our guy gets it several times a year,” Diane whispers as she inspects the label on a container of organic Greek yogurt. “I knew there was something about him; I just hadn’t known the diagnosis until the guys told me the last time he was hospitalized.”
Suddenly I’m transported, once again, to the hospital, to Remington trying to tell me something, and me running away . . . and then him, trying to cope, with a thousand women in his bed.
I swear I ache deep, so deep, right where my soul is.