Stagnant. That point where you feel like you’re in your own little cloud of
darkness, but no one knows it. On the outside, you smile, and the days go by. No
one knows. You feel trapped like a mannequin in the window. All anyone ever
sees is the surface smile while inside you die a little every day. Depression
isn’t something you willingly chose. It’s something that crept up on you like a
thief in the night. Little by little, it
stole your energy. Perhaps once you were a vibrant little pond, but you lost
your outlet. All the dirt and silt began to build up, until you found yourself
a bog of misery and weren’t quite sure how it appeared. You don’t know how to
get out alone anymore, and everything, everyone… they all seem to be so far
away from the problem that they can’t understand. You feel alone, and retreat a
little further into the cloud of despair.
So you watch from the window as life passes you by. It’s as if you’re trapped in a fast forward
film where everyone outside is going in super-speed motion, the sun is going up
and down like it’s a bouncy ball, but you’re trapped in slow motion- just
wading through the mire. You’re waiting
by the window. Someday your prince will come, someday you’ll find someone… you
wish upon a star that something will change. That someone will come along and
save you, because you keep struggling by yourself. You see the world from your
window… It is too bright, too perfect, too fast, too lonely, too cruel… It is
safer to smile faintly behind the window. Shut off from outside contact, they
lose the sense of who they once were. Their expressions stiffen, and they stare
out at the world with bright, glassy eyes and the indifferent grimace of the
mannequin.
Inside there is a knot of emotions that is neither pain nor joy, but a
mixture of each. It is hope and fear, loneliness and friendship. It is those
who are on the inside looking out, wishing. There are two alternatives before
them: take a step away from the window, the comfortable niche you might have
carved for yourself, and walk into the world once more; Or you can retreat to
your room and never catch a glimpse of the outside world. If you leave the
window and go outside, you feel the fresh air again, you see the people
smiling, time slows once more, returning to the normal pace at which you can
actually have meaning in the passing days. Each day holds some irreversible
spark that marks it as unique- though it may be similar, there is something
different. A smile, the weather, a chance encounter. All the things we could
see from the window, but were not fully part of. Those who retreat begin to
hide. They envy, they weaken. Shut off
from real contact, they become insubstantial beings who feel there is no
meaning to their existence. It’s not because they don’t want to live, but
because they can no longer tolerate their failures. They get tired, so tired of
trying and not being able to break through. Then they become hanging mannequins.
If only people knew. If only they saw that face in the window and
recognized it for what it was: a cry for help. Not for pity, but for friendship
and love. Something as simple as a smile,
a hello, a do-you-want-to-do-such-and-such-with me? A prayer. The knock at the
door, the roommate who pulls them from their comfort zone. A phone call in the
middle of the night. In short, caring. It can hard to pull people from the
window that they haunt, but it can be done. One person can make the difference.
One person can take them from their secluded window and show them that the
world is so much bigger. There’s so much out there to be offered… if only they
had someone to help show them the way.
We don’t want your pity. What we want is your friendship.
We’re watching from the
window…
We will never forget what we see.
We will never forget what we see.
