You don't want to get out of bed. You don't care to dress. To eat. To open your mouth and say something to those who talk to you. It's just not worth the effort. Whatever color there is has leeched out and it all looks grey, and there is pain in your stomach that can't be there and yet you feel it. It's plenty real. And for no reason you start crying and can't stop, and when asked what's wrong, you can't explain. You don't know. And it doesn't seem to matter to try to understand. What's the point? It's easier to let them roll, the tears. Then when exhausted from crying, it's easier to curl up and maybe fall asleep, if sleep decides to come. It plays the same game as the people around you. It seems to want to extract some kind of a reason out of you, the reason you're so down, before it decides to relieve you.  

Nothing is worth the effort. You can't move your fingers, your head, your eyes. You can stare at your shoes or at the wall for hours, and the time will trickle by slowly, as if to tease you, to mock you. You have flashes of impulses to get up and do something, but then you forget why it's important and stay inert. Why bother? Then even the question disappears. It's no longer there. You no longer wonder why. You wonder nothing.

You begin to want to die.

It makes perfect sense. You're dead weight. It's painful to continue to exist. It's painful to dissolve in all these tears and quiet staring and silence. It's painful to watch people throw you looks of pity and worry because they don't know how to help you. It's painful to collect yourself and fulfill your body's basic needs, and it's annoying. You could do without. You watch your hands and your feet and they're not yours. They belong to someone else. You know you can't go on like this but there is no strength in you to stop it. It consumes you, and you let it.

You hope for the end.

But then something changes. You remember something. Something that pulled you out before. Not once. Not twice. Many times. And your body, grateful for that memory, decides to act on its own. And before you know it, you're back at it. You're writing. And it's leaving you. Leaving you.  

It just left me. Just after writing this. I watch it go. The things that hit so hard this week, they drove me in the ground to my knees, to my belly, to my neck. The things that are not connected but somehow converged in my head in one awful cocktail. The terrible loss of lives in Orlando. The memories of rejection by my mother. The suffering of the black people in this country for over 400 years that I'm reading about for Janna. A whole week without writing and so without an outlet for my emotions. The news that my grandmother is dying. The inability to see my children every day, especially my Anya who is so far away. The mindless sexist hate that is starting to touch me online the more I speak out. And then the last of it, the worst. This sudden conviction of doing everything wrong. Of not getting better. Of writing utter shit.

I write to fight it, this depression. I know that I will win. I know that it will pass. It always does. I know that I will find it in me to stay loving and centered. I know that I'm not alone. You've felt like this too. You told me time and time again. And I promise you, I'll keep creating stories. For me. For you. For all of us. I know that if I keep doing it, it'll make it easier for you to keep doing it too. Please. Keep making art. I need you. We need each other. Sometimes the art that we share is the only thing to hold on to, to get out of this depression. And it's real, I tell you. You can't touch it, but it can touch you. And it will feed on you. It feeds on real lives.