A story

There once was a boy who loved to dig holes, for in these holes he found the secrets of the world. He would dig and dig everyday until he found the bottom of something and the would promptly move on to the next hole.
One day, a storm blew in while he was digging and he grew concerned. As the rain began to fall he feared that the drops would fill up his work and wash it away. Or worse still that he would not escape and would drown.

He was so close to the bottom though that he dug faster towards what lay beneath.If he could make it before the storm grew too bad he would at least have the secret that he had worked so hard to find. But the storm grew worse and his prize elusive. As with all secrets of the world it was buried deep from the reach of people.

When the storm was at its peak he found that the hole, contrary to what he thought would happen, had protected him from the rain and thunder. He was elated to find that this hole had revealed to him two secrets about the world, despite how far he had to dig.

So the boy continued to hunt for the secrets of the world and when a storm would come he would simply dig a deep hole and would hunt until the rain had passed.

Eventually, as boys are want to do, he became a man. Still he hunted the secrets of the world deep under the earth, and still when storms came he found shelter among those secrets.

One day, when he was still a young man, a storm unlike any other came. It was terrible and violent and so the man dug deep into the earth to escape its fury. He dug and dug, but still the storms pounding followed him. Finally he found the bottom, but instead of a secret he could return to the surface, it was instead a glistening cave.

The cave sang and glistened with secrets and lore of the world and did much to drown out the fury of the clouds above. He spent a great while here, exploring and listening and soon he lost track of the time. The storm raged and raged, but he was able to shut it out and saw nothing but the cave.

It came to pass that the man found himself lost in this cave of wonders, but did not care to fix it. He was as happy as he could be underground, and the secrets he found brought him joy and knowledge. Soon after though he began to grow hungry, and to wonder what had happened to his home. As he walked down the corridors nothing seemed familiar. No post or sign pointed him back to the entrance of the cave.

He became frantic and ran through the tunnels looking for a way out.

The storm still raged above and mocked his efforts to be free.

He despaired at the thought of being locked in this darkness forever.

There was a rushing sound ahead of him and he ran headlong to meet it. There he found a waterfall, beautiful and glittering even in the dark. It ran from a hole in the ceiling and fell into a great pond below him. The water of the pond was clear and at the bottom the man saw his shovel that he had lost so long ago.

He dove into the pond and swam to the waterfall, choking on the salty ruinous water. He fought the force of the falling water and scaled the cavern wall towards the hole that had led him here. His skin burned from the water scouring him and his eyes were near blinded by it, but he put one hand in front of the next.

The thought occurred to him that he could let go and just fall back into the pond. The cave below still had many secrets for him to find, but he continued anyway.

He felt the wind first as his head came up out of the hole. It was cold and terrible against his skin and made him wish again for the warmth of the cave.

The man opened his eyes and saw naught but devastation wrought by the storm in his absence. Gone were the lush trees and soft grasses. Even his home was all but washed away.

Despair threatened to consume him as he walked to his battered door. He swung it open on its rusty hinges and was welcomed by a warm fire in his hearth, his desk still sat as he had left it.

He sat at his desk and picked up his pen and began to write.

The Stars

Writing, as it has been seen by me for a long time, is therapy. Far better therapy at times than even medications because words weave their emotimancy in both directions, the receiver on the other end and, more importantly, the writer. Words, when used properly, can be crammed full of everything we are feeling. Each one becomes an evocative scent, a nascent dream, or a landmine. That is the writer's job as far as I am concerned. To tell a story, and all the levels that entails. Characters are only people so long as they are made up of all the elements that people need.

But writers have to be careful. Sometimes emotions, when we try to express them, aren't under our full control. This applies to most people. Snapped comments said in frustration. Thoughtless jokes. Painful remarks made in anger. These are all traps we are familiar with. But the writer sits, word after word, mired in a soup of emotions that, if left unchecked, will consume them. That is the trouble when dealing with pain and sadness. It eats at you even when you try and work around it, so it becomes dangerously easy to drown when you decide to dive headlong into it.

That is where my rut came from. It wasn't that I had that infamous catchall of 'writer's block', it was that I had burned out all of the feelings that I had dealing with personal crises and then trying to write personal stories dealing with the same feelings.

The same can be said of depression. It is so generally misunderstood that the very word has become synonymous with 'sad'. But it is so much deeper than that, and is another mental mire to get stuck in. To want to flail wildly at the word but not feel the energy to move your arms. You sit and see the water coming in through the holes of your world but instead of plugging it you sit down and let the water rush over you.

It isn't a sad feeling, depression. It is a hopeless one. An all consuming apathy. It is being tired, but not in the 'hard days work' or 'I'm sleepy' way. It is a fatigue akin to metal parts tearing and giving way after years of over use. Of a tire going flat as the last tread is torn from its bald surface. The shirt that finally tears along its threadbare seam.

It is a powerful force, and one that is easy to get lost in. I would like say that depression is not the opposite of happiness, but of passion. Passion is that beautiful burning flame that we all try to tame lest it consume us and depression is the near absolute snuff of that flame. It is the cavernous brazier where once our lives were filled with heat, light, and power. It moved us to greatness and filled our lives with illumination. But it cannot be relit like a campfire no more than one can relight the sun with a torch. It takes the right conditions and the compression of hydrogen and helium to ignite a star, to bend space and time around its core and project light, the fastest thing in the known universe. Without it there is no life as we understand it. There is no sight. It is one of the single most powerful things that our minds can understand.

The same is true in writing. Every syllable you type finds you dealing with the powerful forces of the human heart. Each phrase and paragraph, every page and punctuation talks to the deepest parts of us. It reaches all the way down to where the star that birthed us still resides. But like all things deep and beautiful, it is easy to get lost in.

So write your words. Let them guide and help you, and if your readers follow along then all the better. Use them to help you find that star and then let it light your path home.

It is like Sagan said: "We are made of star stuff."