Maybe he wasn't my soul mate. Cam Saunders appeared on the scene long after I first laid eyes on Zig and fell harder than I had ever fallen for anyone. For most of our relationship, I spent more time thinking about kissing him and being with him than actually doing it. Things had their highs and lows; the highs feeding me false hope, and the lows leaving me more confused than I had ever been before. It wasn't a perfect relationship. Most of the time we were caught in a pointless cycle of fighting, breaking up, falling in love again, and getting back together. It wasn't easy, but however distant he became and however confusing he was, I never completely gave up on him. Underneath the Cam who started fights at school and pushed me away, I always believed there was a Cam worth saving. My Cam.
Now he was gone. He killed himself a year and four months ago today, so I feel like I should be more put together by now. I've told my therapist every little thing I loved and hated about him along with every last thing I missed and every last thing I regretted not saying to him and every last thing I resented him for not saying to me. When my therapist wasn't around, Katie was usually good about listening, even if it's only over Skype now. Even though I know that people love me and I know that I'll be okay, there's always something setting me off.
For one thing, I don't seem capable of low-risk dating. The guys I fall for are always in some kind of trouble. Last semester, I watched Zig walk away from a life that put two of his closest friends in the hospital and almost got someone killed. The worry I felt about Zig for those few weeks was enough to tear open the flood gates my therapist and Katie had so carefully helped me build, leaving me helpless against the grief and anger I still had yet to honestly face. As more and more facts came out about the gang feud and the life Zig was living, I began to realize that Zig had risked his life every day for as long as he could remember just to exist in this world.
My therapist used to tell me over and over that Cam's illness made him live in fear, as if that was supposed to make what he did okay. The Zig that lived in fear for his life was the same Zig who sang in Winston's musical and taught me to dance. Zig knew what fear felt like, and he survived. My therapist told me Cam saw no way out. I remembered a time when Zig saw no way out, but he still managed to talk to me, and I managed to help him. My therapist even said that Cam must have believed that no one really cared about him. Zig's own mother abandoned him, and he still believed he had a right to walk on this planet. If making sense of depression felt impossible before, Zig made it a thousand times more impossible.
It was fall now, and Katie was taking an abnormal psych course for her minor at university. She told me that depression did things to your brain which made you almost into a different person. Last week, she even linked me to this YouTube video where a guy who had been depressed for twenty-seven years talked about how he believed there wasn't a single person on the planet who cared about him (including his wife and three children) until his doctors helped him adjust his Vitamin D levels, put him on some medication, and sent him to a therapist. After he got help, he said it was obvious to him how loved and supported he was, but that the depression felt like a phantom that followed him everywhere, telling him that people hated him and wished he was dead.
After watching that video, I kept on having nightmares where I'd briefly see the real Cam, the Cam who would never do something so horrible to himself (or to everyone who cared about him). He'd smile and ask me how my day was going, and I'd think he was finally back and the whole suicide thing was just a misunderstanding. Then, this creepy shadow creature would show up and just kill him right in front of me. It really felt like depression took him over and made him do what he did, making depression the real killer. If someone could have tamed that monster, it was still possible that I'd be with Zig now and Cam would have moved on too. Still, I like to think that we'd at least be friends. Instead, depression killed him. When someone kills someone else, the killer's supposed to go to jail. There's supposed to be justice and closure for the friends and family who lost someone they cared about.
There's no justice for this monster called depression. It's still out there, targeting whoever it wants, and I never know when it will strike again. When Miles was doing drugs and lying to me about it, I wondered if depression was grooming him to follow Cam's example. When Zoë was raped, assaulted, or whatever they were calling it, I worried that she'd think what Cam supposedly thought – that no one cared and that there was no way forward. Even though I didn't even like Zoë, I made t-shirts and rallied supporters to keep that from happening. It was like we formed a giant army to fight any depression that tried to take her down. Zig was the latest person on my list of people to worry about, and my therapist observed that he might have managed to break the it. I helped Zig when he needed it, but he turned Vince in on his own. He fixed his own life because it mattered to him.
What was the difference? Where was the disconnect? No matter how many different ways I thought about it, I couldn't understand why Zig managed to tell the detective about what Vince did and end the cycle while Cam never managed to talk to me or to anyone else about what he was feeling. Maybe Cam wanted to tell me what was wrong, but depression told him I wouldn't care. I believe he would have asked me for help if he could have. I believe if the real Cam were in charge, he could have fought harder. Maybe it would have meant quitting hockey or leaving Degrassi to go back home, but it anything would have been preferable to suicide. The real Cam was a good person who never meant to hurt any of us the way he did.
That Cam deserved a eulogy. He deserved a real funeral service like Adam Torres had. His friends should have taken turns sharing their favorite memories of him, and then we should have started a campaign to raise awareness about mental health. We could have sent out screening surveys and helped make sure we never lost another friend to depression. Most importantly, we could have been easier on him. He didn't deserve to have his death all but ignored to keep suicide from looking "acceptable" to people who had never known depression and likely never would. Someday, I think I'll need to say something or do something, in case the real Cam is listening from somewhere. Until then, I'll settle for finally understanding that it wasn't my fault, and in all likelihood, he did his best as well.