We’re deep into autumn now, though the weather this week is meant to be warm, and I’m starting to feel the crushing despair that seems to come every year around this time. The hopelessness, the meaninglessness of everything, the feeling that it’s pointless even to try, to carry on for another day. That everything I do is doomed to failure.

Today was a bad day, even though I’ve been taking my meds regularly. I went shopping and couldn’t get out of the car to thrust myself in amongst the dull-eyed, mindless shoppers, each after their own meaningless trinkets. I’m in a stupor, unable to understand even the most basic of sentences that drift unheard from the gaping and senseless mouths of everyone around me. I’m surprised I’m coherent enough even to write this.

I really thought that this year would be different. Last year I went off my meds, and so naturally I crashed, coming desperately close to ending everything. This year I’ve taken them religiously every morning, every pill. And it’s happening anyway. I can feel the blackness closing in around me.

I try to force myself into the things that ought to bring me joy, but it all seems so fruitless. Why write? Why take photos? Why be nice to me wife and son? My book will never sell; I will never be a good husband or father; all I capture is the mundane and banal existence around me.

Where will this path lead me? When will it end? Does it really matter if I take my medication or not? Who am I but a nuisance, a bother; a devastating hinderance to everyone I interact with? I try to make myself heard, but I am voiceless. I try to understand, but I have no empathy. I offer no support, and demand everything in return. Selfish, greedy and assuming. Disgusting. Filth.

In the end this will pass—or it won’t. Either way, I’m stuck, along for the ride, and I’ll never be able to get off. This has been my life since I can remember, and it will ever be my life until it ends. Maybe that end will come soon; maybe not. It doesn’t matter.

It just doesn’t matter.