I've spent the last few days hating my own existence, wandering from one end of the flat to the other, refusing to change clothes or shower. I unplugged the Mead, and spent most of my time in a chair reading. I've never really liked reading, and I still don't. No matter how many pages you get through, how many concepts you understand, it never feels like anything gets done. It's just a thing to do, I guess, when nothing else in your life feels right and you can almost hear the ticking of time. Each minute that passes is another one you've wasted. Each breath you take is one closer to your last. I made it a point not to sleep just because I was supposed to; if I was going to feel like this I wanted to do it my own way, not follow some societal rule that says people should sleep when it's dark out. Reading like that, for twenty hours straight, did something to my eyes, made them hard and hot. I passed out with a book in my lap, and when my sore neck woke me I was still holding it open like that, only now it had a puddle of drool running down between the pages. I threw it on the ground and walked myself to the other room, where I collapsed on my bed. I blinked for a while, trying to see if the effort would make my eyes any better, but it didn't. Shrugging off my clothes and sliding beneath the sheets I let my body go and shortly thereafter my mind followed.

Sleep does wonders for depression. The next morning, or whenever it was that I woke up (I had the Mead disconnected and the windows blocked and had no other way to tell time) I felt a hell of a lot better. I avoided the chair I'd made a depressive bubble around and threw myself in the shower, thinking that a good run of water down my back should do me some good, wake me up, get the juices flowing. Something had to change; I knew that. I felt...I felt like things were different now, and I had to adapt. The depression, while useful for what it was, could not be who I became. And in the shower is where it happened.

I emerged a free man, observant of the world and its laws but no longer subject to them. Worry did not have its hold on me, nor did pressure, nor did expectation. And, most important, nor did time. I could be what I was, do what I would, and live for myself. Guilt had slid off me like the soap suds; self-loathing had dissolved with the dirt on my body.

Because in the shower I made a decision. Nothing matters, in the end. Nothing is changed. The universe is still the universe, and nothing you or anyone else can do will change that. Everything dies, in the end. Every form of life shines for just an instant in the cosmic consciousness, and is then snuffed and replaced with cold, with death. Someone else might find this depressing. Might find it sad.

All I know is that I'm free.