Another day. Built something. Deleted it. Built it again.​​​​​​​​

There’s a kind of depression that isn’t sadness. It’s the absence of the thing that makes sadness possible. A flatline. Gray stretches of time that don’t feel like time.

I stopped calling it depression because the word stopped connecting me to anything. Too soft. Too familiar. What I had was closer to a void.

But I could still think. Even when feeling was gone, thought remained.

Not to heal. Not to recover. Just to stay.

Camus wrote that there is but one truly serious philosophical problem. He didn’t flinch from it. Neither do I. The question sits beneath every morning I choose to get up.

I don’t have an answer. I’m not sure the question wants one.

The wellness people would say I should practice gratitude. Make a list. Three things. Every day.

I’m grateful for the compiler that catches my errors. I’m grateful for the delete key. I’m grateful that no one expects me to be okay.

There. Three things.

Some days the code is the only thing that makes sense. Syntax has rules. Logic has consequences. If I write it correctly, it runs. If I write it wrong, it fails.

There’s a kind of honesty in that. No ambiguity. No interpretation. Just cause and effect.

I’ve spent whole weeks talking to machines because machines don’t ask how I’m doing.

I tried the apps. The meditation. The breathing exercises. The morning routines that promise transformation.

They work for people who have something to transform into.

I just have this. The same person, the same void, with slightly better posture.

The cursor blinks. It’s been blinking for eleven minutes. I know because the timestamp is right there.

Eleven minutes of nothing. Or eleven minutes of staying. Depending on how you count.

People who’ve never been here don’t understand why we don’t just “do something.” Take a walk. Call a friend. Get out of the house.

They don’t understand that sometimes the walk is impossible. The friend is in a different universe. The house is the only place where the weight is manageable.

They don’t understand that we ARE doing something. We’re staying.

I don’t write about this to be understood. I write about it because writing is a form of thought, and thought is a form of staying.

The words don’t fix anything. They just mark the time. Evidence that I was here. That I am here.

Still.

Tomorrow I’ll build something else. Maybe I’ll delete it. Maybe I’ll ship it. Either way, I’ll have spent another day on this side of the question.

That’s not an answer. It’s not a solution. It’s not even hope.

It’s just what I have.

The cursor blinks. I type something. I don’t know why.

I do it anyway.