The tingly feeling of doom is everywhere. Creeping through the cracks, filling the pores, the doom reaches through the skin and deep into the body, envelops the soul, nestles around it until it’s cosy. The doom isn’t going anywhere.

Imagine waking up like this. You check your morning email to see a bunch of useless LinkedIn invitations, flick through Reddit. Maybe someone’s out there looking for help but you feel cynic, you don’t look to help someone, more to ramble at them trying to do stupid things.

The day flashes past. Sometimes you glimpse a page turning in a book, or a familiar name popping in online in a chat – but the book’s boring and the people aren’t interested in talking to you. They don’t care about your story; after all your life is boring and depressive and no one likes to listen to the whining. Not for too long.

You try to distract yourself with work but it all seems futile. Nothing brings you joy. The violin is a series of mindless rehearsals. The storytelling is another reminder of you being unable to punch through the block. The last composition you wrote collects the dust – you never figured what to do past the four chords. No one in the entire world cares about what you do and there’s no point in spending the time on it all if it doesn’t bring joy to you either.

The slumber welcomes you back. It’s soothing. It doesn’t allow you to feel anything; it takes your doom and sadness and stores it away until you come to your senses again.

Someone tells you to fight this mood, others say that it’s normal and they feel the same most of the time. Your life becomes a candle, your flame glimmers in shadows. It’s no longer blazing to cast the changes, it’s barely warm to keep you alive.

Back to the slumber.

The evening is the worst. It’s when you’re used to meet some people you care about but they never come. You don’t even care at this point. You’re so starved of a chat, of a touch, that you don’t want to talk to anyone. You walk away and curl up in your corner, sulky at everyone for betraying you. You don’t want to support me, I’ll see how you feel when I’m dead.

Slowly, the outburst of emotion dissipates along with your consciousness, and you drift to sleep. Tomorrow’s another day you need to claw through.