The Boy Between: A Mother and Son's Journey From a World Gone Grey

by Josiah Hartley

‘If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.’ Henry David Thoreau

I love this quote!

I was certain that I wanted to disappear from the face of the earth and sleep forever. I no longer wanted to exist. And for those thinking rationally, those who love me, I can only begin to imagine how painful that is to hear. I can’t apologise because to do so would suggest I had some level of control over this process, but I had none. I can’t apologise because I did nothing wrong. It wasn’t a choice, and I can now see it was a consequence of my illness, a result of my decline in mental health. And actually it wasn’t only a consequence: as I saw it, it was, in fact, the cure. It was the answer I had been looking for. In the grip of my depression, I did not control my thoughts: my thoughts controlled me.

On the nose bud

‘When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.’ Leo Tolstoy

‘What can we do to help him?’ And if their sincere words and affirmations of love were able to heal, he would have cartwheeled down the hallway and burst into song.

please hang on, just hang in there . . . give it time, give it one more day and then one more day and then one more . . . Please do that.