"It is the year 4005. We will be dead, our research published. Our lives, careers, and dreams will be done. No one will look back and say, 'Ahhh, damn. Zahra Grimshaw failed her chemistry test and had a weak sixty page ecology paper. I can't believe that!' It's not going to define your whole life. You need to just take one minute to breathe."
These are the words of my advisor and professor, Dr. Xavier, coming from the lips of my lab partner, Pennie. These words had an instant calming effect on my fit. I am not the type of person who can be easily disturbed, be it by a scary movie, an awkward situation, or many of life's stressful burdens. But on this November day, at 2:40 AM, I was Atlas, crumbling under the weight of a world to heavy to carry anymore. I was stuck in a rut again and seasonal depression had been crawling away from the summer sun and had been heading in my direction since spring had cast it off. The slimy, cracked, aching hands of depression grabbed for fresh soil, pulling its naked, gray, crippled body behind it and it made its way to bum fuck Egypt's academic headquarters, the middle-of-nowhere Metropolis - it had made its way through the small, weird, and removed town in which I lived.
There is still a set of invisible scratches in my front door, where it clawed and pawed at the door, which I would not open, until it popped it from its frame. The crippled and diseased creature pulled itself across my floor, closing the gap between it and me, and evidence of the battle which ensued still lurk around my gloomy basement apartment: used dishes from many meals ago on the table (certainly to discourage the creature from getting any closer), dirty clothes tossed carelessly around the house (assuredly thrown at the creature, in self defense), and pillows and blankets curled in a ball on the couch (surely the only spot in the house which the creature cannot reach) where I have been sleeping/vegetating for two weeks. There are also multiple piles of paperwork (which I hide behind to confuse the creature) and Chubbers, the cat (a valiant feline companion, who has braved the weather and war and fought beside me in every wintry battle. His only complaint is when dinner is late, and it is, in every respect, polite).
If the words of my professor are correct, this crippled, draining creature will die with me and the story of our great war will likely not reach the ears of the citizens who reside in the year 4005. Given the off chance that these citizens do hear about my great war, it will seem at best to be the smallest pinching battle of all time. They will not care if the creature and I died as equals in battle or if peace was made between the two of us. Perhaps victory will be mine to claim? Or, on a particularly dark and weak day of the future, perhaps my small gloomy basement apartment fortress will have been taken over by the creature and I will be left waving the saddest white flag my family has ever seen.
It is the year 4005. We will be dead, our research published.Our lives, careers, and dreams will be done. No one will see the drag marks, made by our inner demons, circling the house like vultures. No one will see the pieces of earth, stuck in the corner, which you overlooked while trying to clean up the mess you made when you let that heavy planet roll off your shoulders and crash to the bottom of the universe. No one will care about the tiny things, either - the bad grade on a test, that day you hair stood straight up, the day you cried in front of someone, the dinner that was ruined because you somehow burnt soup, the day you looked too fat in those jeans, the day you stuck your foot in your mouth.
It gives me great comfort to know that the year 4005 will never know my "fog".
