The future is a wondrous place. It is as terrifying, as exciting, as humdrum or mystifying as you want it to be. Whether you are thinking about tomorrow or a thousand years from now, there is no "wrong", just shades of likelihood or believability. In the form of hope, it is a rope that pulls us through life’s challenges, rarely failing unless we get snagged on sharp, thorny circumstance. Our view of the future is intensely personal - a mirror held up in front of us reflecting back our dreams and attitudes of today.
So it is that when you find that mirror no longer reflects light; instead you are faced with a black, inky oil that wants to take and take, like a black hole in space. Confronting you with the revelation that you are no longer a person but a void. When you can no longer conceive of "tomorrow". The very word as empty of meaning to you as ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
When I was clinically depressed, I also had anxiety. They say that depression is the unhealthy dwelling on the past and that anxiety is the unhealthy dwelling on the future. Therefore, I must have had some concept of time, of something yet to come. Only, these flashes would be like blinding attacks of confusing light, filled with motifs of terrorists or gory accidents that would creep up on me stealthily, in bed or in the shopping centre or cooped up on a train.
In calmer moments, I would try to think about the "future" - a purely academic exercise as again the concept was slippery. I knew it meant the career, the family, the relationships but when these felt non-existent or hanging by a thread, trying to conceive of these in any concrete matter was like wafting your hands through a cloud of steam.
At some point, I don’t know when, I must have managed to grab onto the handholds of reality and steadied myself. In time, hope was loosely knotted around my body again and the lightest of tugs became perceivable. I timidly placed a foot on a jutting opportunity to re-engage with the world and pushed with my feeble resilience. And the light returned. Softly at first, a bit murky and foggy but a weight lifted from the brain.
Now the future shines brightly again, prisms shooting concentrated rainbows across my vision. It contains a cast of characters, of family, colleagues, friends and boyfriends. I dream of specifics. Of clear, three dimensional places and people.
Like everyone, hope still gets snagged frequently but I can now see where I’m going. Or alternative routes pop out at me that I can swiftly grab and manoeuvre upwards. The future’s rays tickle my skin, lending me colour and vibrancy that I am grateful for.