I’m sliding back into it. The depression is creeping back, starting in the already dark corners and slowly moving in to the middle of the frame. Like the thick overcast that sometimes rolls in and blots out a previously clear sky. All of a sudden you think, “What happened to the nice day?”

How do I fight for hope? How do I rally against something shapeless and empty as a lack of hope?

Hopeless. Empty with hopelessness.

I could fight a sickness, or remove a tumor, or fight to climb an obstacle. I don’t know how to fight a void.

I feel like one of those balloons on a stick that you sometimes see. I look full and shiny like the regular helium-filled balloons, but it’s all bullshit because I’d be drifting slowly and aimlessly along the floor without that stupid looking, clear plastic straw thing that’s holding me up like a facade. Full of nothing.

Wake up, keep busy, make people laugh, climb back in bed, feel hopeless. Repeat, repeat, repeat… relapse.

Yes, I’m still under a psychiatrist’s care. No, my meds haven’t changed. No, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I have an empty Olympic-sized pool and a shot glass of water to fill it with. Realistically, had I enough of those shot glassfulls, I could fill that pool. But I don’t. And I don’t have the energy to fill them, either. And I almost don’t have the energy to care about my inability to fill a theoretical shot glass with water.

I know depression lies, I’ve heard it say terrible things to me, and I’ve believed what I heard. I know that most likely I will feel better, but I can’t see how, or when.

All I can do is repeat to myself the only thought that sustains me: Anything can happen. I like to think that means good things can happen, things that will improve my life and maybe bring me a few buckets full of water to help fill the empty pool.

Heck, maybe one day a goddam tanker truck will unexpectedly show up.

After all, anything can happen, or so I like to believe.