Cheap wine, dessert made from a chocolate bar stuffed inside a day old butter croissant, a bed scattered with Rumi and my Bible that has barely been opened over the last few months and a journal with few entries even though its purpose was to document the past few months of life...

 and a billion thoughts firing all over the place in my brain, seeking for some sort of stilling.  That is what makes up my evening.  What's been making up my evenings for the past few months.

Some people disbelieve me when I try to tell them how depression has been a foe and friend of mine since before I hit my teens.  It's like a fog and a clarity all at the same time, and in a strange way its arrival at moments of my life feels like a dysfunctional comfort.  I've battled and surrendered often to an existential angst and sadness more often than people tend to believe, and I'm still learning how to ride the wave when it hits like a hurricane and no one seems to know how to reach me out in the water.

If I knew the pursuit of medicine was going to be such a challenge, I wouldn't have started the journey. That makes me grateful that the initial decision was made without seeing the future.  But reality and my track record pretty much convince me that even if I stuck with journalism and filmmaking, I would still be hitting depression turbulence.  It has nothing to do with my career choice.  It has to do with me and how I feel everything and how I go through the highs of wanting to change the world met with the lows of realizing how broken everything feels.  

There must be something good that comes out of all these thoughts.  I even want to believe that there is a reason for disappointments and dashed hopes.  Still waiting for that revelation and transformation.  In the meantime, thank God for Langston Hughes. And I'm sorry to all my friends to whom I have been unresponsive and absent.  I just haven't had any energy to even look at my phone on days.  I will return soon.  I can't promise that, but I feel it to be true.  Hopefully my sense of humor and wonder are on their way back as well.

Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die,
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams.
For if dreams go,
Life is a barren field
Covered with snow.

~ Langston Hughes