Imagine finding yourself on a new planet and figuring out what the fuck depression is.
It took me forever to realise what it was, and do you know why? Because it’s a fucking shapeshifter. I’d speak to one person and they’d tell me depression meant they couldn’t find the energy to get out of bed in the morning. I’d speak to someone else and they’d tell me that for them it was bursting into tears randomly even if it was while eating a Big Mac or something.
And I struggled to understand this at first. On Eden, before They arrived, depression wasn’t something I could know. The world was so bright, and vibrant and vivid, and everyone was so happy, that there was no cause for depression. And after They arrived, I shifted into my logic phase. Maybe that’s how aliens deal with depression – they outthink it.
Some people, they outcry it. Some people outsleep it.
And some motherfuckers out-eat it.
And that’s where Ether sits. At the table, with a bunch of fucking burgers, and a bowl of greasy fries, and gallons of fucking sodapop. That’s definitely gonna cause some frequencies if you catch my drift.
I just presumed she was a hungry girl, but maybe she’s not hungry. Maybe she’s a different kind of empty. Maybe rather than filling the literal hole with literal food, she’s trying to fill a hole in her soul – trying to patch up the sadness she feels. Maybe now it’s Wiz, but she’s always eaten since the first day I laid eyes on her so it’s not just that. Perhaps she thinks if she doesn’t eat then she has no reason to be here. After all, Tag is the outgoing one, Wiz was the funky, cool one. Ether? She just eats.
And what else?
Fuck all.
But the problem is that trying to mask your sadness with food is not going to help you Ether. All it will do is make you sadder, each bite taking you one step closer to a self-inflicted Armageddon. You’ll hear them shout “she’s gonna blow!” but it will already be too late.
I’m not going to tell you to stop eating. The fuck do I care if you do or you don’t. But take it from me – it’s better to find something that makes you happy, rather than something that stops you feeling sad. It might sound like the same thing but it’s fucking different, let me tell you. It’s the difference between enjoying life and surviving life. And man we got a whole lot of enjoying to do and not a whole bunch of time to do it in.
So put down the pasta, set aside the sub, and take a walk on the wild side, Ether. See that you don’t need to fill that space full of junk. You might just find that if you leave that space it will flourish all by itself.
So lets do it now and do it loud!