A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares

by Krystal Sutherland

Of course, this wasn’t the first time that Eugene had been sad. Depression was a real sneaky asshole. Like that baby girl doctors thought they’d cured of HIV after aggressive antiretroviral treatment, because her viral load was undetectable, but as soon as they took her off treatment, the disease came back. Like HIV, depression was a king at playing hide-and-seek. It concealed itself in reservoirs deep inside the mind, waiting for the walls you built around it to eventually erode. Depression could be at undetectable levels for months or years. You’d be all happy and stable and think you were cured, you were a survivor, and then BAM, out of nowhere it resurged. Imagine, like, surviving the sinking of the Titanic or something and thinking you did it, you lived, you won the game against death, but then a few years passed and the Titanic started hunting everyone who got away, killing them one by one on the streets of New York. We’re talking an I Know What You Did Last Summer–style revenge horror movie, but with a 46,328-ton passenger liner as the crazed murderer, floating around in a sea of fog. That’s how irrational depression was.