I gain consciousness slowly, lifting myself out of the comfy darkness of deep slumber, a few brief seconds of still and harmless peace before reality falls over me, pressing at my skin. How could I have forgotten? The power of the grief that hits me is so overwhelming that, within seconds of waking, tears threaten…

I see my room. I see a book on the floor, an empty mug on the bedside table. Slowly I become aware of myself. Slowly the memory clears in my mind. I remember the cup of tea, the book that I was reading. I rub my eyes several times and reach around for my glasses.…

She had walked many valleys just like this one. She knew this sort of darkness, knew the feeling or, more precisely, fear, that she would never make it back up on to level ground. But she had forgotten how awful it could be. How dense the darkness could be. She remembered the engulfing blackness only…

It was another one of those nights, the ones when I would watch the sky turn light again, having still not managed to drift off to sleep. It felt like I had all the time in the world, the minutes trickling by slower that I thought they could, and yet, as I tried to turn…

The sun is coming up as a new day begins and I finally click the anti-climatic ‘submit’ button to hand in the last of my several-thousand word essays. Despite the feeling of exhaustion and irritation that staring at laptop screen for hours has caused, there is joy there too. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d make…

When I’m feeling particularly low, I often imagine myself neck deep in water, fighting to keep myself from falling under, fighting to take each breath. Depression can often feel like this. An overwhelming force that has a life and a current of its own. The fight to keep going, together up each day, to get…

It was a slow process, for her, a gradual sinking rather than a dramatic fall. So slow that it might escape your notice, as it did hers, until you’re knee deep, waist deep, chest deep in the mud. It was the mundane things that were crumbling, no dramatic change. The hands on the clock grew…

Curled up on the sofa, I gazed out at the little bit of visible sky that I could see from my typical urban London flat. The building stood solid and firm as the traffic rushed by, every day, and every night. It was never quite dark here. The lights of the cars and the lampposts…