Shaun David Hutchinson

Depression isn’t a war you win. It’s a battle you fight every day. You never get to stop, never get to rest. It’s one bloody fray after another.

Physicists have theorized that we live in an infinite and infinitely expanding universe, and that everything in it will eventually repeat. There are infinite copies of your mom and your dad and your clothes-stealing little sister. There are infinite copies of you. Despite what you’ve spent your entire life believing, you are not a special snowflake. Somewhere out there, another you is living your life. Chances are, they’re living it better. They’re learning to speak French or screwing their brains out instead of loafing on the couch in their boxers, stuffing their face with bowl after bowl of Fruity Oatholes while wondering why they’re all alone on a Friday night. But that’s not even the worst part. What’s really going to send you running over the side of the nearest bridge is that none of it matters. I’ll die, you’ll die, we’ll all die, and the things we’ve done, the choices we’ve made, will amount to nothing.

waiting for electronic bits to zoom through the air and tell you that someone was thinking about you. That for one fleeting moment you were the most significant person in someone else’s insignificant life.

Sometimes I think gravity may be death in disguise. Other times I think gravity is love, which is why love’s only demand is that we fall.

As human beings, we’re born believing that we are the apex of creation, that we are invincible, that no problem exists that we cannot solve. But we inevitably die with all our beliefs broken.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m floating alone in the ocean. Other times I feel like the ocean’s in a paper cup.” He squeezes my hand. “I refuse to end up like my folks. But what if Cloud Lake’s all there is? What if this is it?”

“Would that be so terrible?”

“Not if we’re together, but I’d rather start our lives somewhere else.”

“Where?”

Tommy stretches. He sighs. “Anywhere, Ozzie. Anywhere is better than here

enjoyed exposing people to the hypocrisy of their own sincerely held beliefs

Of course, Tommy’s ability to argue any side of a debate made it difficult to know what, if anything, he actually believed

checked the websites that had previously confirmed thirty billion light-years, but they had all changed to eighteen.

So . . . yeah.

Calvin inhaled deeply through his nose and exhaled through his mouth. A vast-ocean sigh I couldn’t tell whether he was swimming or drowning in.