The Falling of Sleep The Falling of Sleep Sherry ...

Sherry and I inch forward in the same near-standstill traffic we've struggled against all day. It's 4:30 on a broiling August afternoon, and we have two more hours to traverse the final 120 miles to Northern Virginia. Brooklyn to Baltimore took six hours. I've just decided we can't stop to see my grandmother, who's dying in the hospital. Grim practicality: Nathan only has one funeral, and if my grandmother dies before I can visit, I'll attend hers later.

Neither of us talks much. Neither of us has been sleeping much.

A week ago today, a vicious thunderstorm pummeled New York City. Howling winds, torrential rain, deafening crashes of lightning?I cowered in my bed, desperate for it to stop. For five hours, my windows rattled, and the house shook.

Two days later, Sherry and I found out that Nathan, our old friend from DC, was dead. I hadn't seen him in several years, since he'd moved to New York. During the storm, he'd been dancing on a roof on Broome St. The lightning entered through his head; he was already gone when help arrived.

For years, the DC punk scene was my world. In the early 90s, I fell in with the Beehive Autonomous Collective, an anarchist infoshop on U St. Some of those people, including Sherry, remain my dearest friends. Nathan was often at the Beehive, and he played saxophone in a band called Bubblejug. He was a quiet, gangly 16-year-old with a stack of dreads and eyes the size of flying saucers. Sometimes we would hang out all night and he wouldn't say a word; in his company, words were overrated. I reveled in Nathan's sweet, gentle demeanor. He provided some sanctuary; DC punk may have been my home, but it was intimidating.

I haven't been back since moving away in the summer of 1995. I left 20 pounds too light, my arms and legs a mess of bruises from anemia and vitamin deficiency. That winter and spring, I'd slept between 19 and 22 hours a day, and I'd more or less stopped eating.

A major depression doesn't generally crop up out of the wild blue. It's not like a car accident or a surprise party, but more like a certified letter from the IRS. Even when you kind of know it's on the way, it sucks when that letter arrives. Take the murder of one parent, add six subsequent years of living and battling with the traumatized surviving one. Factor in the famously enjoyable "Hey, I'm a queer" process. Ice the cake with some heartbreak, a carjacking at gunpoint and a year at school in Greensboro, NC.

I'm surprised the shrinks and pharmaceutical companies weren't lining up at my door.

Figuring I should try SSRIs before suicide, I found a doctor and agreed to a great deal of medication and therapy. And I lost a lot of friends. Chances are, your local anarcho-punk is very comfortable at a protest, a hardcore show or in a discussion about gentrification or the World Bank. Chances are, he or she is a lot less comfortable facing a friend who's clinically depressed. One of my roommates, a semi-famous social justice activist, sat me down one day and told me to get a grip. Other friends just stopped calling and visiting.

To be fair, I was scary. Once, I calmly declared to my best friend in London that I'd be killing myself soon?i.e., say your good-byes. Eight years later, he still won't speak to me, and part of me doesn't blame him. Another part of me is still a little bitter, and not just toward the Brit. I felt abandoned by the first family I'd had in years. As I got well, I realized that my expectations of my friends had sometimes been unrealistic. People have jobs and activism and bands and relationships, and it's the rare person who can deal with a clinically depressed friend, much less help take care of her.

The service for Nathan is held at a small chapel tucked away from the road, behind a dense stand of pines. We park and immediately run into old friends. The last time I saw these people, I was little more than a vegetable, so I'm intensely uncomfortable. Shame and anxiety coalesce with exhaustion and grief into an oily nausea. I think I might be sick.

I murmur an excuse and find a seat.

Nathan's family speaks briefly. Then they invite us all to speak as we feel moved to. One after another, people share their Nathan stories. It's like no funeral I've ever attended, and I'm vaguely astonished at the simple beauty of this gathering. The simultaneous sensations of sadness and elation are confusing, but I give in to them. This is a conjuring. Nathan permeates this space, with its vaulted ceiling and skylights and clean, blond wood.

Nearly a decade after the broken winter on N. 8th St., I have a rich, intricate existence that I fought for and crafted. The shame that choked me upon first seeing everyone begins to feel odd, like someone else's shoes. Tears gouge at my eyes?even in death, Nathan can put me at ease. My anxiety and self-consciousness fade, and I am relaxed, if weary and lonely for Nathan.

At midnight, we're facing five dark hours of highway. Northern Virginia falls farther and farther behind as we curve along the DC beltway. I look over at Sherry. She's clearly exhausted, but looks calmer than she has in days. The sense of relief in the car is palpable. I feel as if a fever has broken, and I know I will sleep tonight.