Coming out of depression isn’t like a fog lifting or a flower blooming. That’s entirely too romantic. It’s more like a bright light, but it’s only just spiking through, it’s mostly dark, you’re tied up. Rough. Burlap and rope tied around you, left alone to figure out your confinement and your freedom. Everything is rough and cold but it’s a real feeling. You take inventory, try and figure out where the pain is worst, try to piece it together with a memory stunted by sedative. Bones creak and scars are measured. Checkmarks go with traumas as you remember the things that you agreed to when you weren’t a qualified advocate for yourself. You’ll pay for those for the rest of your life. You were kidnapped by depression. It owns that part of you. It’ll always creak behind your thoughts. But today you’ll get to wonder if this chance at freedom is real.