When you are struggling with a disease for a long time it is as if you were on another planet and a period of depression begins. Sometimes I think that nobody understands what I am going through. I don't think they do it because the only point of reference is myself. I have never felt this way before, and the shock of the descent sometimes traumatizes me, but in reality if there are people who understand me why maybe they have also been on this planet. You are in a dark land with a population of millions.

It is difficult to explain depression to people who have not suffered it. It is like explaining life on Earth to an alien. The benchmarks are simply not there. You have to resort to metaphors. You are trapped in a tunnel. You are at the bottom of the ocean. You are butt.

The main thing is the intensity of it. It does not fit within the normal spectrum of emotions. When you're in it, you're really in it. You cannot leave it without leaving life, because it is life. It's your life. Every thing you experience is filtered through it. Consequently, it magnifies everything. In its most extreme form, the things that a normal everyday person would hardly notice have overwhelming effects. The sun is hiding behind a cloud and you feel that slight change in the weather as if a friend had died. A paracetamol is swallowed and the neurotic brain acts as if it had taken an overdose of methamphetamine.

Depression, for me, is not a boredom, but an exacerbation, an intensification, as if I was living my life in a shell is total exposure. That shell may be protecting me, but it also prevents me from feeling the full force of good things. Depression can be a very high price to pay for waking up to life, and although it is on top of you, it is one that could never seem worth paying. Clouds with silver coverings remain clouds. But it is quite therapeutic to know that pleasure not only helps to compensate for pain, but that it can come out of it.

That feeling I have, that everything is going to get worse, is just a symptom. Thinking positively, I think things are not going to get worse. You just have to look up there and I must not look down. I hate myself. That is because I am sensitive. We are all human, but also totally wonderful. Nothing lasts forever. This pain will not last. The pain tells you that it will last. The pain lies. I have to ignore it. Pain is a debt that is paid over time.

Minds have their own weather systems. I am in a hurricane. Hurricanes eventually run out of energy. I will wait. Minds move. My mind is a galaxy. Darker than light. But the light makes it worth living. Even when the darkness is total. I always know that life is not still. Time is space. I am moving through that galaxy. I will wait for the stars.

Someday I will experience a joy that matches this pain. I will cry tears of euphoria, I will eat delicious foods that I have not yet tried, I will be able to look at a view from a high place and not evaluate the probability of dying from a fall. There are books that I have not yet read that will enrich me, films that I will watch while I eat extra-large popcorn buckets, I will run for a river and have night conversations and laugh until it hurts. Life awaits me. He may be stuck here for a while, but the world will not go anywhere. I'll hold on here I can. Life is always worth living.

May this day find the peace we seek.

Patricio Varsariah.