Picture of the Day: 

Panda topiary! 

Quote of the Day: 

"What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hello, my readers. I again have been absent. I am a very busy little bee, mark my words. I have gotten some work done on renovating my room, written some in my pirate story, and pounded out a short, partial-story that I am going to post here today. 

I woke up just feeling dark. Though, I must admit that this has become my norm. While there is nothing strange about this anymore, but I was moved this morning to put it to paper. Perhaps for those of you that want to understand what it feel like to be depressed, this little partial-story will be a good introduction. I have not finished it. I don't know how I want to open it, or what I want to further explain. So, for now this is it. Take a read, I suppose, if you so desire. If nothing else, I have given you an update and you can frolic away happy with the updated-ness of the blog.

I am thinking about calling the piece "Depression", and I don't intend for it to be too much longer. Right now it is going to sit pretty at two pages. Maybe four is the limit for this. I doubt many people will want to read it. But here it is anyway: "Depression: A Work in Progress".

            She was not ugly, but she was not beautiful either. She was no more than a plain girl with pale cheeks and unruly hair that was impossible to tame. No, outside she was average. It was the inside that was hideous. It was the inside she could not stand.

She worked in the darkness, rote motions making her morning routine mechanical and empty. She kept her eyes low, away from the mirrors, brushing her teeth and washing her face. She finally looked up when it was time to do her hair. There was not much to do, the most that could be done was to run a brush through and fight vainly for a hairstyle that did not look too unkempt. She reached for the cabinet, eyes glazing over to disrupt her view of her own reflection, and opened the door. Inside was her brush, beside it a bottle of Ibuprofen that sat ready for a day of migraines and muscle aches. Her eyes lingered on the pills just a little too long before claiming the brush and shutting the door again.

A part of her wished she had the nerve to simply take them. She was tired of the way things were, but was smart enough to no longer pray for a miracle. After all these years, nothing was going to change.

Sometimes, throughout the day, her fingers would flip open her phone for no other reason than casual amusement. However, each time it glowed up at her with nothing more than a clock on display, she felt her heart wither a little bit. There were never messages, there were never calls. But she could not blame them. She would not want to keep in contact with herself either. The internet used to be an escape, a place where her façade of normalcy was not so easily broken. Now, though, it had merely become a place where the world could show her what it was she desperately wanted, and what she could not have. Every day there were updates of people doing things together, engagements and marriages. Every day, there was evidence of life and blessings littered on the front page of Facebook as if the very world wanted to harp on her and remind her exactly how wretched she felt.

Sometimes she would imagine herself as better. Sometimes, she would imagine herself living a life that she would be proud of. But it always came back to the same thing.

She was lonely. There was no hope of marriage when she could not even make friends. Acquaintances were all she could handle well; they were the only people that she could see for brief lapses of time where she could hide herself behind a fake smile and false laughter. The more time they spent with her, the farther they drifted away. It would get harder and harder to pretend that everything was fine, to make it so that she was fun. The truth was it felt like her mind, body and soul were rotting from the inside. And nobody, especially boys, could last long before they caught the smell of decay and knew something was desperately wrong and that she was not worth their time.

And she was wasting away to nothing.

Her eyes were empty, dull and sad. Her lips had forgotten what it was to smile and mean it, and her heart what it was like to feel profoundly happy. Her mind was twisted and knotted in shadows and darkness, a black-hole that let nothing but emptiness linger.

She could not remember when her eyes had actually held something other than tears or blasé indifference. The diagnosis had come early, when she was not but eight years old. Still, those around her were testaments that the years before that had been battered down by the disease already. She had thought it would get better, or easier, as time had passed and medicine improved. She had thought that someday, maybe, she would be normal. That she would have friends to call at any time, or a day where the sun would just make her smile for its beauty. But it had been over fourteen years since the fated diagnosis, and the only thing that had changed was her hope. At first she had battled hard. She had given it everything she had. But the darkness could not be moved. It merely constricted and choked her happiness, her hope, her light, until there was nothing left but shadow and sadness. 

I think feeling like you are rotting, and that the stench of your decay is what drives people away is probably the best way to describe this condition, and I am very proud of it. I want to add a bit more, perhaps adding in the fact that my Bible has become another dust collector, that my mother and father are finally getting fed up with my problems, too, threatening to kick me out of the house if I do not change soon. But I am almost positive I am stuck. Anyway, you may comment if you wish--but this time I am not going to ask for feedback. Most of you are going to be so repulsed by the dark nature of it that you will probably never look back at this blog again.

I never said that I would be perfectly happy. I promised, however, that I would be perfectly honest. And to that I will abide.

For those of you going out to Tulsa this week for the Mission Trip, I wish you the best of luck. Know that you are in my thoughts still, even if I am not there with you. God will do amazing things with you, as he has every year.

To read, to write and to lie--they all seem to be so closely related now.