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

by Josiah Hartley

I was exhausted, and the thought of having to spend the rest of my days in this endless blank circle of desperation was one I was not prepared to contemplate.

I wasn’t sad anymore; I felt nothing. Being sad would have been an improvement; the ability to feel anything had been gone for quite some time.

Depression crept up on me, robbing me of myself, and by the time I fully realised what was happening it was too late; I was in its grip.

It is isolating, torturous and monstrously unfair that it can, for people like me, take what should be the best years of our lives.

I would have thought that a) she’d have got it by now and b) I might have figured out a way to stop or alter this thought process, because in all honesty I’m bloody knackered.

It was as if I existed in that moment when you first open your eyes in an unfamiliar place, when it takes a second to come to and for any sort of clarity to land. Only it didn’t. I didn’t come to. I was vacant and vague, distracted and a bit confused. There was no plan. And I didn’t have the first clue about how to tell her or anyone else this, not only because I didn’t have the confidence, but I didn’t have the words. I didn’t know what was happening to me.

as though I had lost the connection between my thoughts and how to express them,

‘I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.’ John Keats

I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew things were far from fine and at some level I just wanted her to acknowledge that and then maybe I would not have to pretend too.

Can you imagine living with a long-term illness that erodes all that makes you you and someone describing you as ‘a bit under the weather’?

In the grip of my depression, I did not control my thoughts: my thoughts controlled me.

When something is broken, by definition it doesn’t work! And depression is a brain that is broken. It is an illness. A fracture. A sickness. A malaise. And no one, no one on the face of the earth, no matter where or how they are born or what gifts they are born with or without, would choose to be depressed. Got it?

Being in the midst of severe depression and taking drugs that did very little to positively aid my illness felt like living in a time warp. When I look back I can’t distinguish one day from another. Every day was sad. Every day was the same. Every day was exhausting.

a boy between the hold of his illness and a future that is as yet unwritten, and that is exciting.