Monday evening after work

I sat on the kitchen floor, leaning against the sink. Staring at a corner of the room, feeling tired, achey and heavy. I felt the weight of gravity pushing down on me. I had an unhappiness, the feeling like I wanted to cry, but is was somehow inaccessible. Like a radio paying from another room, that i couldn't make the effort to drag myself over into. I could only sit on the floor and moving at all was too hard.

On my way home I'd been slightly annoyed by an oblivious skateboarder in my path, who I'd had to ride a big circle around. I 'd heard ambulance sirens up at the freeway intersection. I'd had interesting interactions with traffic and a cluster of buses on a steep downhill, that in retrospect made me slightly wince at the element of luck involved in getting home without incident. And near home I'd seen crowds standing on corners, staring at the chaos and group huddled on the road around the unconscious skateboarder in the gutter.

The evening was sunny and pleasant. Nothing bleak about my aspect from the fridge across to the sunlight on furniture, and out to blue skies, treetops and ocean sounds beyond. I sensed the difference of this sadness, this sense of - now that I think about it - depression. I didn't recognise it at first because of its different flavour. It was the grief of those around me, those close to me. I'm daily steeped in it, colouring my own sense of loss, which is milder, manageable, more subtle and hard to grasp - and therefore put aside - waiting to leak out in unexpected ways.