#tw depression

⚔︎          ·              i’d  love  to  write  but  unfortunately  ya  girl  has  the  depression  saddies  and  crippling  anxiety  today  so  we’ll  see  .ᐟ.ᐟ  (  baelor meme  to  cheer  myself  up  under  the  cut  hehe  )

The world is burning. Politicians have targeted you and your ilk in speeches and in memos listing terrorist groups. You're trapped in a steel box 45 hours a week, and you feel like you're moving through a dream. When you get home, your brain disengages with reality even further in an attempt to protect you from the only thing that *does* feel real: The soul crushing despair. Does it ever get better?

Research bonus:

+2 Inland Empire

-3 Volition

How often have you been bothered by each of the following symptoms during the past two weeks?

Not at all

Several days

More than half the days

Nearly every day

Or occasionally for a few hours of one day, then two straight days, then the whole weekend of a great week that turned sour, and those few morning hours, and the past few nights but not the middle of the day

If you can get out of bed than you’re probably fine

If you’re turning in assignments I’m sure it’s just a bad night

Patterns are only patterns if you let yourself look close enough to see them

The tree might be falling but it’s not falling fast enough so just don’t go outside

Just don’t be around to hear it

If you want to sleep better stay up late enough to be exhausted

Plus you’ll have a good reason to feel unwell

If you feel like you have a problem run through these questions

Be honest

If it doesn’t feel right to say several days don’t say it

Check not at all

Better to underplay it than over exaggerate

Better not to cosplay suffering you cannot quite be sure you are experiencing

For the first time in months, Peter Vanderbilt had managed to leave the house without having to convince himself that the world outside was worth facing.

It had started with the trip.

His parents had called it a vacation, though Peter knew better. There had been too much tension between them for it to be anything so simple. Their marriage had been strained for months, perhaps longer, and neither seemed particularly interested in admitting just how close they were to falling apart. So they had packed their bags and dragged Peter along, insisting that getting away from home would do them all some good.

Perhaps, annoyingly, they had been right.

For months, Peter had barely been able to leave the house. His depression had swallowed him whole, leaving him staring at the same four walls day after day, unable to find the energy to answer messages, go to work, or even convince himself that getting out of bed was worth the effort.

The museum had continued without him.

That had been one of the hardest parts.

Peter loved his work. As an art director, he had spent years turning empty museum rooms into something breathtaking, taking paintings and sculptures and carefully arranging them until they told a story. Art had always made sense to him in ways people rarely did. There was meaning in every brushstroke, intention behind every composition. He could look at a painting and understand exactly what someone was trying to say without them ever having to speak.

People were considerably more complicated.

The trip hadn't magically fixed him. Peter knew that.

But somewhere between unfamiliar streets, long dinners with his parents, and mornings spent somewhere that wasn't his bedroom, something inside him had loosened.

He had laughed again.

Actually laughed.

And for a little while, he hadn't felt like he was drowning.

Of course, there were still things he hadn't figured out.

There was one truth in particular that Peter kept carefully locked away, even from himself.

He was gay.

He knew it.

At least, some part of him did.

But knowing something and being ready to say it aloud were two very different things. He wasn't ready for the word to exist outside the quiet confines of his own thoughts. He wasn't ready to wonder what it meant for his parents, his career, his life.

As far as Peter knew, his parents had no idea.

He didn't know that his father, perceptive as ever, had already figured it out.

His father hadn't said a word.

Not because he was disappointed. Not because he was ashamed.

He simply knew that some truths couldn't be forced out of someone before they were ready to speak them.

So when they returned home, his father said nothing.

His mother fussed over the luggage. His father complained about the journey. And Peter stood there with his suitcase in hand, staring at the familiar house that had once felt like a prison.

It didn't feel quite so suffocating anymore.

He exhaled slowly, adjusting the strap of his bag over his shoulder.

Tomorrow, he would return to the museum.

Tomorrow, he would step back into the life he'd temporarily abandoned and pretend that two weeks away had been enough to put everything back into place.

But tonight?

Tonight, Peter could simply enjoy being home.

Maybe he didn't have to understand everything yet.

Maybe he didn't have to put a name to every feeling.

Maybe, for once, it was enough to know that he had made it out of the house.

And that, for the first time in a very long time, he actually wanted to go back outside.

So he did, and when he did his path crossed someone.

"Hi, nice weather we are having aren't we?"