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

by Josiah Hartley

I hope one day that people will be able to chat in the street or across the water cooler and say, ‘I am depressed. I have depression’, in the same way we do a cold or the flu. And with the reminder that unlike the flu, you can’t catch depression. I hope my story in some small way will help with this.

saying plainly that if your mate’s struggling, start listening.

A nasty trick.

I didn’t give up, didn’t delete myself, but I came very close.

‘Your normal is your normal’,

I wish everyone could be kind.’

‘Today I can see the men these two boys will become and Josh is going to be a lovely citizen of the planet, kind. You should be very proud . . .’

‘I did, sir,’ I replied. ‘I knew I could do that.’

What a bloody stupid way of measuring smartness – but that, my friend, is a whole other conversation for a whole other day.

But I was scared. Really scared. I wanted to run. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to be at home. I wanted company. I wanted to be alone. I didn’t know what I wanted. I felt completely overwhelmed by the whole experience.

I was scooped out, completely hollow, and at the time it made absolute sense to cast off the pointless husk that housed my despair.

I felt like a dot, a floating speck in the universe, and without self-worth or importance.

He sat on the floor, occasionally reaching out in the darkness to hold my hand or pat my arm, uttering in a constant low murmur that I was going to be fine . . . I was not alone . . . He was going to stay with me . . .

In our house, a headache was cured with a big glass of water, some fresh air and a nap. Colds with hot water, honey and lemon . . . You get the idea. So to reach for tablets, to cash in the paper slips that both of the healthcare professionals I had visited waved under my nose felt like a big deal.

And depression is a brain that is broken. It is an illness. A fracture. A sickness. A malaise.

but they never stopped trying to understand and do the right thing.

IT’S NOT JUST A PLANT! IT’S PETER! AND I HAVE TO KEEP HIM ALIVE BECAUSE ON THE DAY HE PERKED UP, JOSH WOKE UP AND SAT UP AND I CAN’T EXPLAIN WHY BUT I THINK THEY ARE CONNECTED AND I CAN’T LET ETIHER OF THEM WILT OR FLAG OR SHRIVEL UP – IT’S UP TO ME. I HAVE TO KEEP THEM ALIVE!

Absolutely laughed reading this out of pure understanding.

And that’s the message: no matter how bad you feel, how low, how sad, how broken, tomorrow is another day and you might feel differently, and so please, 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.

Josh is not fixed. Josh is not cured. But he is alive and that is everything.

we need to make the hardest of conversations easier to have.

Breathe.

Hold their hand.