I think I'm in a depressive episode. Straight up. No bullshit. I get really cagey when I bust out phrases like that because a part of me feels like it's a sign of weakness, but for the sake of my sanity, which feels like it's being horded by fucking demons, I ought to be frank with this, as opposed to Dennis.
I feel nothing. I barely eat or bathe. Nothing scares me. Worse yet, occasionally nothing feels real. Everything lacks colour - in the ontological sense in the word. Blue and red are the same, but whatever unobservable richness that makes them stick out in my eyes is gone. It's like there's a grey tint on everything. It's kind of like if there was such a thing as a life force, and it's been sucked out of the entire world.
Things like Edmontunes, or my friends, or my family, or my past, or fucking Red Deer - the things that occupy my life - feel like a dream. I feel like I've dreamed all of these people up. I feel like I've woken up from the dream of them and am now in the desert of real life.
People text you all the time, asking to hang out. You wake up to it almost every morning. Sometimes - most times - you feel so grateful. But you're also worried. You're worried about losing everyone. You are desperately worried about that, in a few short months, when everyone moves away to finish their PhDs or graduate from their undergrad degrees, you will never see them again. There will be no hanging out for hours in the campus bars. There will be no more drama, nothing. These days will end. And of course they will! Nothing's forever, dude. You should just accept that. You most likely will always know them. But the thought of this ending fills you with grief with the force of a Panzer tank. Sometimes, you'll sob to yourself on your bike.
I feel stupid. I can't read. I do nothing. I masturbate vigorously, drink coffee and feel none of it, lay around all day, watch YouTube and/or the TV until the light mows down the last remaining thoughts in my mind, the ones that weren't already killed off by the sea of brain fog. There doesn't seem like a future. I feel like I'll be here forever. I know I won't. I feel like I've been cast into a cave of myself. I miss everyone. Even when I force myself out of my house, and go to Denny's with my friends at midnight, and on the drive there tell my friend that I feel unbearable, and I just need to get out of my house or I'll lose it permanently, and he says he's never felt depressed despite knowing plenty of people who have, and then you tell him you probably know exactly what it's like.
You stay up 'til 3 a.m. watching The O.C. You bought a boxset of the first two seasons for $2 in a liquidation store in Calgary a few years ago. You watch it instead of The Sopranos because you don't feel like the violence. You watch it and like it a lot. You think about Enid, who you now feels like an old friend, even though you talked to her for 3 seconds a few days ago. You miss her, sort of. It's a complicated kind of missing. You barely knew her, and she rubbed you the wrong way more often than not. She never apologized for anything, even though she would occasionally say things you felt were cruel. But you miss the way you felt like you could understand each other. She gossiped like you could and constantly made jokes only for herself. She lamented never having friends but knew everyone. Knew strange people, like this legion of sorority girls, who she would take moody, evasive photographs of, which you would compliment her for, and say she had a good eye, but she, of course, would brush it off, saying she didn't really care about photography like that. She would smile at you in a way that freaked everyone out. Your roommate, who knew her in high school, said this obvious attraction was unprecedented in her. You know better because she basically told you she has a long-standing secret thing for him. A part of you finds that hilarious. Ben and Ewan: Edmonton's cutest indie boys! Another part of you feels like sloppy seconds. At a party - the one that put you two on the map of people-who-should-never-have-anytbing-to-do-with-each-other-but-yet-are-hanging-out-all-the-time, you made her feel like sloppy seconds. You don't remember rapid fire asking this other girl to come home with you, then immediately asking her - possibly within earshot of each other - but you know you totally did. You feel terrible. You feel like a sex pest, and you suddenly understand cheating. For the next month, you stop feeling like a good person. You also stop caring. You apologize to her in the green room of this punk bar the next afternoon. You think to yourself, despite the mammoth hangover, that teenage you would find you unbelievably cool. You tell her, hoping to start a larger conversation, that you apologize for making her feel in any way uncomfortable last night. She doesn't make eye contact with you. She rarely does. She shoots you down: "At any point?"
