The Room I Dwell In

Depression isn’t a mood; it’s a state of being. Someone can be happy and in love, or sad and heartbroken, and still have depression.

Depression is a room.

My room is small, and I have always been here. It has bare walls and bare floor and a bare ceiling.

There’s a window in my room that I can open if I want. With the window open, I can sometimes feel the sun on my skin, warming me, or cool rain wetting my face, or wind blowing through my hair. All of that comes from outside, though, so it does not interest me, because it is not a part of my room.

My room is all that there is, the only existence that I have ever known. I know that this room is only one of many. All around me are other rooms, with other people in them. Some rooms stand vacant for a time, waiting for their occupants to return. Some are like mine, always filled. They are all bare rooms, some with windows and some without, some small and some large, but empty rooms all the same.

The door to my room is open. All of the doors are open. I can leave my room at any time, except I don’t know how. I never learned how to walk. My arms are too weak for me to crawl. This room is my entire world, and I know nothing else. I will never leave my room. It is not that I lack the will to fight, only that I do not know how.

And why should I fight, even if I did? Why should I leave even if I could walk? Curiosity? Envy? I do not understand why any place outside of my room should interest or concern me. I do not understand why I should covet anything else. That outside world doesn’t matter to me. Only my room matters, because it is all that I have, all that I have ever known. My room is my world. I will live here until I die, in my room.