It's a Friday night, and I'm sitting on my bedroom floor in the darkness. I've been here a while, and in the diffuse light of my clock radio I can trace the outline of all my possessions. The world outside my window is darker still, deep space meets Baycrest Drive. I don't know what I expect to find, but I keep sitting, looking around in the darkness at my tiny and transient sliver of real estate.I've believed since childhood that I have exceptional night vision because I can move in shadows as easily as in light. (When others are around, of course, I keep the lights on.) Lately I'm not so sure--perhaps it's not a sign of physical acuity but of unusual willingness to forgo colour and comfort and accept a twilit existance. I know I suffer from mild depression; some days, life's kaleidoscope of events, people, and relationships fades to the emotional equivalent of the hazy and menacing silhouettes I see before me. And indeed, I treat a darkened soul the same way I treat a darkened room: I boldly (or stubbornly) go about my business in spite of collisions with the unseen. I remember how things were before darkness fell, and that is my map to navigate my new obscure and shapeless surroundings.
Ending a depression is not as easy as flipping a light switch. Even so, I sometimes feel that I haven't really tried. I seem to have a minor flagellant ethic, a buried conviction that I deserve to suffer for the sins of others. I don't know if I should accept that as part of who I am, fight against it as a self-destructive character flaw, or ignore it as a small price to pay for living on this beatiful but imperfect Earth.
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