This morning I woke up after an all-to-honest dream and was followed by a stray (I think) cat on my way to school. It seemed really strange, since stray animals would typically run in the other direction. It hesitantly stepped onto the sidewalk from a grassy area surrounding a sewer pond and took off running after me. It was pretty, one of those furry breeds with fine grey hair and bright blue eyes. It kept meowing like it wanted something, like it was trying to formulate sentences in its incomprehensible cat language. I talked back at it, telling it to go home and asking what it wanted. When I stopped walking, it rubbed up against my leg as if it had known me for years. I wanted to take it with me, smuggle it in my locker and carry it home after school. I wanted to go buy it a can of food and keep it in my room until its owner claimed it. Instead, I took out a multigrain cracker out of my spaceship lunchbox, threw it onto the grass, and watched the cat go sniff it and (hopefully) eat it. That was the last I saw of it.

I still don't know why it followed me. It was a sort of poetic occurrence, or maybe I just percieve it that way, like I do with most things in my life. My head often generates some sort of idealistic illusory correlation when faced with eerily beautiful chains of events. Although, I can't help but discredit coincidence once in a while.

Last weekend, I went back to the breakroom to eat lunch. I entered in the middle of a conversation that Ali and Maria, two of my coworkers, were having. Ali explained that one of his cousins, who had struggled with depression for a long time, recently shot himself in his bedroom. Ali said that he was a brilliant kid, an introvert who fought an uphill battle with loneliness. We all felt it.

Josh, a long-haired metal drummer in his mid twenties with an unapoligetic wit, came back for his break and joined the conversation once he understood the gravity. Ali left to go clock in, leaving Maria, Josh, and I to discuss the heartbreak of being young and depressed. Josh, like me, grew up in a "broken" household. His father, like mine, married a posessive younger woman, and he, like me, often felt chastised for his emotions. We both spent a good amount of time in our adolescence feeling depressed and hopeless, to the point where we both thought about giving up. One major quality that my closest work friends and I share is that we've all been in a dark place. Probably an even more important quality: we all survived.

I had my last depressive episode before my second day of work. Tell me that's not poetry.

A few days later, I learned that a friend of mine, who I care deeply about, almost reached her breaking point. And it broke my heart. I thought, if I felt so profoundly for Ali's cousin, who I've never met, how much would it hurt to lose someone with a face and a voice familiar to me? Someone who I care for and admire dearly. I wanted so badly to physically be there, but all I could do was send internet messages, hoping that the raw emotion that inspired the text would reach its destination as quickly and clearly.

It felt like only being able to give a stray animal a one-time fix to its hunger, when I want to give it a home. For all I know it might have a home, but that's beside the point.

Depression's a bitch. Really. And I can guarantee that someone you love dearly has struggled with it. To all those in the midst of battle: you are loved, you are strong, and you are more than sufficient.

To that cat from the street: I hope you find your way home.