Content warning: depression

There are days when you just can't.

You know what I mean already, don't you?

They're the days when you wake up with a buzzing inside your head and a bad taste in your mouth. Maybe you manage to drag yourself out of bed. Maybe you make it all the way to the door before your hand slips off the knob and you crawl back into your den again. You email your boss, your professor, your friend. "Sorry," you explain, "I'm not feeling well this morning."

Perhaps you make it to class, or to work, or wherever it is you have been summoned. You probably smile. If you are feeling ambitious, you may even crack a joke or two. You wonder if anyone is looking closely enough to see that the laughter doesn't reach your eyes, just falls jumbled off your lips like font sliding off of wet newspaper. You answer questions. You sit up straight. And you smile.

"What would you like to do today?"

"Nothing," is the real answer. You want to crawl back into your bed with your cat and your darkness and you want the world to hold still with you. You want to write a letter to the universe demanding some answers. You want to cry. But none of those are socially acceptable answers to the question you have been asked, and so you offer up something less genuine and more comfortable, like "Attempt world domination," and then you laugh.

Maybe, on days like this, you even have a good time for a little while. Maybe your cat falls asleep on your feet. Maybe you are with people who love you very much and you play MarioKart together and you are very happy for a little while. You smile like you mean it. It touches your eyes. But there is something else there, too, behind your eyes. You can feel it gnawing at your brainstem like an off-switch. You are happy. But you are sad, too. Sometimes you think that this is the only way of living that you know.

And then there is quiet. And then you are alone. And then you cannot deny the gnawing thing anymore, the shadow that shocks along your spine in a way that disturbs you, in a way that you do not know quite how to talk about.

This is when you cannot do it anymore, where "it" can be roughly translated to "anything." The effort of walking downstairs for a glass of water is too great. You cannot write the paper that is due two days from now. You cannot check your phone. You cannot lift your head. It physically pains you to move. The weight of the shadows has grown too heavy, and you just can't.

You knew it before I said it, didn't you?

There is only one consolation I can offer. It is the only one that I have found.

The fog will lift.

One day you will wake up and your limbs will not be as heavy as they were the day before. You will open the front door comfortably, and the breeze will smell like rainwater and ivy and dampened smoke. You will smile more easily. The edges of your eyes will catch the light. There will still be something shadowy lurking behind you, but you're pretty sure that's where shadows are meant to fall-- behind.

And you will smile.