Outside Looking In.

The quiet is so thick you can feel it. It contains so many possibilities, pretty songs and such, but not for you because you hear them differently, like they’re drained of color, which f*****g sucks because music is your favourite. The quietness is scary and empty. So you clear your throat a little to make it ok for a few seconds. Then the quiet crowds in again. The air has weight. Light is not fair because it shines on you and in you, showing every bad quality and feeling and thought you ever had. You close your eyes, open them, there’s no difference. Both sides are terrifying in different ways. The sun burdens you with its heat and it’s so not fair because the sun is also your favourite. Everything hurts but you can’t point to it. Every sensation is uncomfortable, bland, dull, dim. Doesn’t matter. The world is pale and inconsequential. Everything is tiredness.

Sounds are assaulting. Every sound is unimportant and it blocks out whatever you’re trying to focus on. People are ghosts. They talk to you and you talk back. But you’re separate from them. They’re in a different world, happy and blind. Fun-loving and carefree doing their everyday things. They’re all inside. In some world where things can sparkle. Warm. Comfy. Safe from the real world. They’re so beautiful you can’t stand it. They’re so lucky they don’t know what you know. They’re so lucky you have to hate them all. But that’s wrong, so you hate yourself for feeling that way.

The ‘real world’. The one that opens up when you close down. It’s empty and full at the same time. It’s blank and dull and has so many levels, like standing water. It’s ice cold. It numbs you but not really. It’s indescribably beautiful with no one to fully appreciate it. Well, there’s you. You see the beauty but it just makes you cry. You cry over a crumb on your shirt because it used to be flour, which used to be wheat blowing in some gorgeous field somewhere. And that deserves some kind of emotion. Everything is ‘next level’ to try to get at the beauty. But you just can’t get it. Because there’s a wall. Actually it’s The Wall. The Wall is not really there but it might as well be. It’s the defining line between depression and health. So it’s real. The only way around it is to become healthy. It’s the Everest of walls. It kills people who aren't strong enough.

Sitting in the real world, you glance out the window at the ugly green and brown lawn sprinkled with pretty red leaves and you’re lost. You can see how normal people would see it - nothing special, kinda ugly. But you also see it the way it is in the real world and it’s so f*****g beautiful. Your eyes water and you look back at your computer screen and 20 minutes have gone by. Time is different in the real world. It felt like you were thinking for hours in those 20 minutes. But it also felt like only 5 minutes or so went by, thinking about that one leaf by the fire hydrant. It was alive at one time. But who cares about that one leaf and its life? Shouldn’t someone? So you take it upon yourself to care. It’s now up to you to care about each one of those leaves, and the tree they fell from, and every single blade of grass in the lawn it’s growing out of. Then you look at the house across the street - it has a lawn, and the one beside it. How many houses are there in town? How many towns are there in Canada? How many blades of grass and trees and leaves are there in the world that you need to care about? The mind reels. And what about every other living thing? How far can your brain reach? How hard can you tax it before you give up? How can you give up when you know you can’t give up?

I have a favourite tree. It’s in Ladysmith. Every time I see it I think “Charlie”, so I guess I named it Charlie. It has such personality! The branches curve in all different directions like it’s trying to dance. I love it so much. It’s so freaking beautiful. It’s huge and stands alone in the world. Like us. If you’re ever in Ladysmith, please see it and appreciate it. It’s right on the side of the highway, bopping along all boss and s**t.

I’ve climbed The Wall a few times in my life. And I’ve been blissfully happy on the other side. Didn’t even care that it wasn’t really the real world. It just felt too good to feel normal. So there’s hope. It can be done. Not all the time, but there’s always maybe. People I know have had depression, some still do. People I love. People I never knew but loved anyway have had it. How dare this disease touch them. F**k you depression. I’ve never known anyone that tried to climb The Wall and failed. But it tears me up and freaks me out thinking about all those people who did try and fail. All those people wasted. Gone. I swear the human body was not designed to hold this much anger. F**k you depression.