We worry endlessly about depression, yet don’t give sleep a passing thought. Coconspirators, I say, working together to steal us away from ourselves.
Am I not myself more when depressed then when I’m asleep? I don’t think so. Where’s the difference, I ask. I don’t see it. I emerge as refreshed from one as I do the other.
And no, don’t tell me to measure my days with that burning ball of gas, either. Don’t tell me to count my blessings. Don’t tell me to look up and count anything. The sun may outlast me, but even it is fading, no doubt depressed itself. So don’t ask me to measure my days. I can’t do it, and I won’t. Measure the length of my existence by counting the passing of another stupor? No. I don’t think so.
How old are you, Keith? Today. Right now. This instant. Hurry, before the sun sets. Before you grow depressed. Before another blink passes by your eyes or another hair grows from your ear. Before you have a chance to think. How many stupors have come and gone for you, my friend? How many have you counted?
Too many, I’m afraid, too many. Too many to count, that’s for sure. And you?
It’s nothing more then a nauseating roller coaster of a dream that we’re never ready for, that’s all it really is. Something we’re forced to see through eyes that focus better on that half of life that only the sun can touch, and we all know how far the sun stretches into the soul of the depressed. It’s dark in there. The sun barely reaches the depressed, we all know that. The heat gives way and our insides grow cold, the same way the light stops short as we slip into our dreams. The same way that each night opens on a new world that didn’t exist an hour before, and we tumble in, tripping over our conscious self, unable to stop our fall, unsure we even would if we knew how.
Have you seen the children in the morning, my friend, as they rub the disbelief from their eyes with the backs of their pudgy little hands?
Yes, I have, but thought they were but tired, being so small.
Living has never been easy, Keith, and disbelief so very tiring. No, I’m afraid it is the old who grow tired, not the young.
Perhaps you’re right.
Perhaps.
Will we talk more of this when I wake? I would like that.
No, you have other worries, my friend, and like a child, you will wake and rub me from your eyes, thinking of other things.