Depression. You sit at your desk and there is music playing softly in the background. You hear the lyrics but they don't make complete sense to you. Arbitrary meanings. Vague articulations, obscure and yet so poignant and close to something deeply resonating within you. Tears form, they trickle down, a pearl, a drop, one by one. No, they don't come down in torrential streams. Hymnal lyrics, like a repetitive, incessant Buddhist chant, they tug and grasp at you. Suddenly, you want so badly to call someone, to have someone just on the other line. The one you love is too close and too raw on the wound. You replay memories over and over again, as though in a perverse way, you realize that replayed memories that torment and torture are the most effective purgations.

You wonder at the phone and your glazed eyes stare past the numbers. In the end, you call no one, not because there is no one to call, but because no one is safe. You don't call, because when all's been said and done, others will never understand; and you don't call that which made you remember, because then it will all crumble like crumbs dropped from the corner of the table.

And then everything will fall apart. And when you next have such moments, there will be no illusion to fall back on.