"I'm O.K., you tell them, but with each passing week the depression deepens. You try to describe it. Like someone flew a plane into your soul. Like someone flew two planes into your soul."

— Díaz, Junot (b. 1968)


Date
July 23, 2012
Metaphor
"I'm O.K., you tell them, but with each passing week the depression deepens. You try to describe it. Like someone flew a plane into your soul. Like someone flew two planes into your soul."
Metaphor in Context
You stop hitting the gym or going out for drinks; you stop shaving or washing your clothes; in fact, you stop doing almost everything. Your friends begin to worry about you, and they are not exactly worrying types. I'm O.K., you tell them, but with each passing week the depression deepens. You try to describe it. Like someone flew a plane into your soul. Like someone flew two planes into your soul. Elvis sits shivah with you in the apartment; he pats you on the shoulder, tells you to take it easy. Four years earlier, Elvis had a Humvee blow up on him on a highway outside Baghdad. He was pinned under the burning wreckage for what felt like a week, so he knows a little about pain. His back and buttocks and right arm are so scarred up that even you, Mr. Hard Nose, can't look at them. Breathe, he tells you. You breathe non-stop, like a marathon runner, but it doesn't help. Your little letters become more and more pathetic. Please, you write. Please come back. You have dreams where she's talking to you like in the old days--in that sweet Spanish of the Cibao, no sign of rage, of disappointment. And then you wake up.
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love," The New Yorker (July 23, 2012). <Link to the www.newyorker.com>
Date of Entry
07/27/2015

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.