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Depression is insidious. Anxiety attacks - public attacks - on the other hand, are downright pure horror. If you, Dear Reader, have experienced such woe and understand, then you understand; if not, you never will.

Case in point: This afternoon I sat in a café I usually haunt. I sat observing the passerby out the large and grime streaked pane-glass window, listening and not listening to the polite chatter of the other diners mixed with the clinking of utensils. It began as a swelling in the chest – not a pain, but a sensation. A mounting sadness which consumes your entire being. Why? What brought it on? Was it the chat with an age old friend yesterday? The finality of accepting the dread soaked alteration from a person whose only passion was to live free and delight in all the wonderments life offered only to disintegrate over a period of a few short years into a non- compassionate corpse whose only wish was to lay down onto the dusty sidewalk and stop breathing? Why is death, a final termination of mounting emotional grief the only true reprieve from such despair? I do not write about this, yet for the past few months – on nearly a daily basis – I have been contemplating ending this sorrow, this horrid loneliness I have trapped myself in.

I sat silently, attempting to cover this emerging lament from the passing waiters, the chatty eaters. It grew and grew, I was overwhelmed with such a feeling of utterly bleak despair. My eyes became shrink wrapped in moisture as I vainly attempted to control the crimson flush of my face. With quickness of breath, trembling of hands, the tears begin to trickle down my cheeks and the added bewildered embarrassment associated with the despondency as others began to notice my uncontrolled public display with questioning looks and inquiries of “What’s wrong?” I could not answer, for the reason that my mind was a kaleidoscope of shattered emotions. Sobbing uncontrollably, my only escape was to get up and flee from the questing eyes and out into the solidarity of the street.

I quickly rushed the few blocks to the dim coolness of my apartment. Sitting in the darkness chain smoking as my mind was bombarded with millions of nostalgic images. I have failed at so much. There is nothing left that inspires me. I seriously believe I am near the end. An end that I so painfully covet.