“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. And like that, poof. He’s gone.” ~Verbal (The Usual Suspects)

If the kids in Stranger Things have “The Upside Down”, I have “The Darkness” and I don’t mean, “I believe in a thing called love” Darkness.

Though I do believe in a thing called love, “The Darkness” I was hanging out with this week was my old friend depression.

I do say old friend, because that’s what depression is.

An old friend.

There for me through thick and thin even on my best days, it is always there lingering, waiting. Just like the image says it’s hard to get rid of the demons when they were there for you when no one else was.

The thing with depression is that it comes and goes. If you’re lucky, you see the warning signs when it’s coming and you’re even luckier to wake up feeling like a million bucks and that you won the lottery when it’s gone.

This round of “The Darkness” didn’t build as the “On Coming Storm“. It just showed up unannounced like a teen girl’s “Aunt Flo” does when you’re wearing white pants (that’s a period reference for you testosterone based lifeforms out there). It slipped quietly into that good night too. Friday when I wrote In the End, I was battling “The Darkness”. I wasn’t sure when it would end. Sometimes the battle is days, weeks, or months. I prefer the days vs the weeks, the weeks vs the months. Actually, that’s a lie. I prefer it not happen at all, but if it does, I prefer a few days.

And then my trusty ol’ iPod (yep, iPod, 160 glorious gigs of iPod), gave me “Keep Myself Awake” by Black Lab today. I haven’t thought about this song or listened to it in years. Eighteen years or more to be exact. It was one of those songs that I played on repeat 1998-1999 (when my depression was at it’s pinnacle). These lyrics: “I’m alright. I’ll be ok. If I can keep myself awake…”

I thought to myself, yep, I’ll be okay and I am okay.

I spent the morning reading and writing (my tethers to sanity), my afternoon visiting an exhibit at a museum with Nick, and crate digging (vinyl record shopping) afterwards. As the sun started setting, I realized what Verbal says in The Unusual Suspects: “And like that… he is gone.”

And like that, “The Darkness” was gone.