imagine coming home from over-time work on the eve of a long weekend, thinking of how everyone else might enjoy this festive friday and saturday and sunday, while you have to stay rooted at home and struggle to revise for 2 examinations that you just flunked last month. your sister gives you an earful for accumulating too many traffic fines in a month yet again ($350), and you remember that you have less than $10 in both your bank accounts combined until the next pay day, which is about a month from now.
while facing all these issues, an urge to smoke arises, and that's when you're reminded that you ran out of cigarettes about 8 hours ago. you splash out your pathetic piggy bank of coins, all in denominations of 20c, 10c and 5c, and in depressing fashion, count out a few $1 mounds with one index finger. you find that you have just enough for 1 packet of those money-burning cancer sticks, and so you think 'damn, that's the first positive thing that happened to me today'!
as you walk to your living room to hand your maid the coins and the unenviable task of buying the cigarettes with them, you notice a pile of letters. you flip through the stack, and find that, addressed to you, there is a government letter, as well as an envelope with the name of a law firm printed on the front. you languidly open both envelopes, wondering what the chances are of the government dishing out some more tax rebates, and of you inheriting a sizable fortune from some relative you've never met, but very quickly these thoughts are killed off. upon reading those letters (they're letters of monetary demand), you find yourself with a new debt of approximately $10,000, and the sick realization that the deadline attached to both bills is 14 days from the previous monday. all this, on top of the existing $8,000 you're currently paying off by monthly installment.
while your mind is hovering between the plausibilities of declaring bankruptcy and robbing a bank, your eyes cast their sullen gaze upon an insurance policy approval. the next few moments are spent on ways to die without making it look like suicide so that the insurance company pays out the money.
you feel like a piece of toy that rolled into a forgotten corner under a wardrobe - broken, lost and lonely, as you make your way back to your tiny, messy bedroom. you habitually go on to power up the computer, then sink yourself into the leather armchair, close your eyes, then take a deep drag on the cigarette that your maid had just delivered to you before you entered the room. you think of how you managed to let it all spiral to this eventuality, and of how you could have prevented it by acting on things the moment you realized they were important. now, 'important' has transformed into 'urgent', and desperation looms large upon the horizon of your mental state. woe and despair is procrastination prolonged.
you want to escape somewhere, anywhere, as long as it's away from these problems, but you can no longer ignore their existence, now that they're collectively breathing down your neck. your mood is somewhere between crest-fallen and suicidal, plus you're starting to feel angsty and restless. you have no appetite for the bowl of noodles on your table. you reach past it for the cup of tea. your mind spaces out, and you start feeling very weary, almost sedated, by the lull of the electric fan and the warm tingle of hot tea down your gullet. you lean forward a little, just enough to reach the keyboard, and begin to blog about, possibly, the beginning moments of the worst period of your life. and so, this is an instance of a post blogged within the early stages of your personal great depression.
