cigar

After a screening, Stephen, my therapist, said I had medium level depression.

I've seen him before, but that was almost one year ago. Since then I had been better, and also busier, so I stopped seeing him. Usually we talked for a full hour, and he jotted down on his writing pad as I was talking. This time, after we sit down and I told him what's going on, he went away and grabbed two pieces of papers, saying it's a screening test for some syndrome.

I lost my interests in almost, everything. I said. Those things that ever made me excited were just gone.

Can you be more specific? He asked.

I lost my interests in traveling.

I hate listening to music. I've been listening to those songs since I was ten years old, and I was never tired of them. Now I just feel them noisy. I used to listen to those very sad songs when I was sad, but now even those songs do I not want to listen.

I stopped cooking. Just thinking about cutting veggies, meats, and spending time making them edible, and washing those cookers and dishes made me feel exhausting. So exhausting.

I did read book. Knausgård is still my favorite author. I'm currently finishing the fourth book of My Struggle. The first half of the book was so touching because I felt the same as he did. But somehow I stopped.

Do you go to campus or lab or anything?

No, not really. I don't have collaborations with people. I mostly work from home.

Then what's your social activity?

I don't really have one. I did hang out with one friend or two sometimes, but that's it. I didn't even want to go out of my house. Now that the days are longer, every day is like an endless suffering -- I'm just waiting for the night fall and the end of the day.

Even though I was weirdly tired of listening to the songs I used to love so much, I was chatting with one of my old friends this morning. She has been living in Japan five years, and we even met long before that. At first we knew each other through online forum of Japanese music and since then we talked a lot about them. Many singers we loved had left the stage, and some bands were disbanded, but we kept listening to them. Sometimes I think it's because of them I have a very high bar for songs. The details in the arrangements, the depth of lyrics, and the rhythm of course. Strangely, I had little requirements for the voice. Of course those clear and sweet voices are good, and I was not a big fan of smoky voice.

But I noticed a change.

She told me that she recently realize that one of the songs written by our all-time-favorite sounds really like another song, called Dark Horse by Amanda Marshall. She sent me the link on YouTube, so I clicked in. That stady and classical folk music drumbeat drew me in immediately. I was a little shocked, cause from 1'12'' it was almost the same melody as in the other song. But I was also a little surprised by this found, cause it's like the familiar melody is performed by another totally different voice and tempo. The song we listened to more than ten years was a sort of perky one, a dreamy one. But this one, the original version, is something totally different. Kinda horribly lonely, kinda comfortably dark, kinda strangely peaceful.

Somehow I started to like those smoky voices, like the one that Amanda has. Somehow this song saved me. I've been repeating this song all day. Remember I even started hating music recently. This song was a miracle to me.