I have not eaten well in over a week; no appetite. For anything, really. It has become a fact of my life that I get this way every now and again, and I've never not survived it, despite feeling everytime that I would die. It is an inconvenience more than anything else, and I tackle it like an inconvenience, like being stuck in a traffic jam or a long queue.

I attempt first to get rid of it. Self-medicate. When I wasn't wise yet, I did the usual: alcohol, cigarettes, drugs; and it was like those antidepressants that just made your more suicidal - just a paradox of your own making. So I tried the more common sense things: got under the sun, exercised, met up with friends, basically pretended that I was not handicapped, just a normal girl doing normal things; how could someone like me ever think of any horrible thoughts? Why, I wear so much pink! The depression gets bored and goes away. The depression is just a child. Do not play with it.

If that doesn't work (and it's already too much work for one inconvenience so it's exhausting), I give up pretty easily. I pass the time. It was more difficult before when I thought it was gonna kill me, but I've had it enough times to know, rationally, that's far from the realm of possibility. I could never kill myself, I have too much pride for that; I would never let my mother keep my body to put wherever she liked, and I could not trust my friends to leave a good eulogy. And anyway it's too many arrangements to be made. Where do I order what I need, how do I do it discreetly, how to make sure the lease is paid when I'm gone? Maybe I am just making excuses and I really don't want to die. Whatever it is, I'm still alive.

I read. I watch comedy shows and dare myself to laugh - a stupid game I play with myself in which I am the judge and the only audience member, rooting for the only contestant: come' on, now. That's how I learned about Panayotis, of course. Everything - about the parents, the insomnia, the crisis of sexuality, the inability to access simple feeling in a way that other people do so easily - was relatable to me. I've seen Presque six times, always when depressed, if not just as a way to see myself, make sure I'm still there, because looking at a mirror had become unbearable.

I translated the book with an app because, after waiting for some time, the publisher never bothered to put it out in English. A lot of meaning must have been lost in its journey from French but even then, it moved me. I think it must have moved me; I could never be sure when I am like this - everything is closed and nothing penetrates me. ("Rein ne me pénètre réellement.” Well, put, Panayotis). At the very least, I felt acknowledged.

Panayotis wants to kill his father and I my mother.

Me too.

I had started writing a book about it, too. It was just after the fourth therapy session when a bit of our lives had spilled out of me so unintentionally it embarrassed me, and I thought, I ought to make this more coherent.

I managed to achieve the opposite. I stopped writing after some time because I realized I had no goal. No argument. What was my mother supposed to do, kill herself? I didn't want to hurt her. Why was she being blamed for all of this anyway, just because she was first in line? But the line is long. Getting longer.

And not everything is about my mother. The depression is not genetic. She did not give it to me. It is there. It exists. I'm doing the best I can and it will go away shortly. All the talking is just passing the time. You can do it well or you can do it poorly. I just read these days, and I'm glad that I read this book because it comforted me. Like when you listen to sad songs when you are sad, you read a book about depression when you are depressed. It's company without the performance of having a fixed identity in a room full of people you could disappoint. It's good fodder for the empty days.