'Hey, how are you?'

'I'm fine, how are you doing?'

'Good, thanks.'

A simple exchange, occurring everyday between individuals around the world, spoken in a plethora of languages, a myriad of contexts. A formality to most people.

Hollow and empty to others. Others, you say?

Yeah, others. Like me, for example. Functioning normally day to day, living with depression and being kept awake by painful thoughts at night. I'm healthy, I guess. Mentally healthy. Mentally Hell Thee. Stupid pun. Dante's Inferno. I guess I read too much for my own good.

Ha, ha, ha. Hollow, canned laughter.

Stop.

Don't let the cracks of the facade let the pain beneath shine into the cold light of another day of pretension. Go home and try again. Or to your dorm room. Some place where you feel like you can reboot. Your car, even.

The following things swim into my field of vision, drown into my ears. A stupid joke in class. A couple holding hands. A concept I didn't understand in lecture. Meal swipe, to go, please. Man walking dog, dog on a bike, almost got hit on the roundabout by a bike trying to avoid a dog.

Wish the bike was a car so I could be laid out cold on the bricks in the sunlight. Maybe they'll pay my tuition. I saw it on Yik Yak, and pressed the upvote icon on my phone screen because I found it funny.

Anyway, time for a cheerful post accident mental visualization.

Hollow mourning, empty funeral. I see it now. Flowers, a cremation. Sad speeches. The closest friends I had, someone I loved. Those I betrayed and ignored. All now united for the ceremony.

Hopefully they'll miss me. I don't know.

Faith in some divine being, none in myself. Pangs of guilt, the acidic burns of apathy. Emotional candle long since snuffed, a burnt out shell forever.

'Oh hey, how was class? Yeah man, that test was horrible!!'

Swerve to avoid the guy on the long board. He had a band shirt on. I should have told him 'hey, nice shirt.' Might have made his day. I don't know. Pretty girl running in the distance. Almost halfway from class, dead center of the campus.

'Lunch?' 'Sure.'

A polarized political season, no hope for the future. I miss Bernie. The planet's slowly dying, years of abnormal weather phenomena getting their records shattered year after year for the past decade. Celebrity gossip, cat videos, relationship advice, the season's hottest fashions. Yeah, those things really matter.

Obliviousness, blinding illusions. Footsteps pound away on the ground near the familiar landmarks on campus. I know where I'm going, but I don't know where I'm headed. Once familiar faces now wear indifferent gazes, the same tired smiles for the remaining painful miles of life we all have left.

Music the one true medicine.

Nobody listens to heavy metal anymore. Blindingly fast guitar solos, long hair - rage manifest on auditory input and cool looking guitars. A crucible through which beautiful lyrics are found.

The void of a broken heart. Anything to fill and numb the pain, a band aid on the gangrenous wound that still bleeds fresh.

'We're here, what do you want to eat?'

'You go first, man. I'll look at the menu.'

Children are born for a different time from the one their parents existed in, so really, any advice my parents offer me is inherently useless but they're paying for my college education, so I better shut up and listen.

I really want a Dodge Challenger, though. That's a nice car.

Stream of consciousness, thoughts drops of water that smash into each other and cascade. Blindingly binding, the speed of light, these sentiments I can't fight. Hey look, a rhyme.

Sucking abyss of sadness, day after day. Nothing matters, nothing ever did. Around 70 years of healthy life left. It's gonna be a gas.

Dark thoughts, these. Very dark. Knives in my mind everyday, pain beyond the point of any feeling or empathy. A bottomless pit contained in the pit between my stomach and my brain, the neurons connecting the synapses that make these dreadfully heavy ideas manifest in my mind.

Thank you for reading. Maybe it helped you, maybe it didn't. Be that as it may, though. God bless you. Whichever one you believe in, or if you don't, may you find peace in some other way.