No Redemption

When does a person feel most hopeless?

When you’re full of confidence, convinced that as long as you work hard there’s nothing you can’t do, only for reality to tell you that you’re good for nothing.

When you get a dog and see how completely it trusts you, thinking you finally understand responsibility and wanting to be good to it forever. Then you realize you can’t even support yourself. You drag your feet, unable to bear sending it away, and it has to go hungry one day and eat its fill the next, growing so thin its skin clings to its bones, yet still drawing close to and trusting you.

Or when your parents spend their lifesaving money to protect you, then lie in a hospital without the money for treatment, still rushing around for your sake even as their lives count down.

Actually, it’s when you finally want to change, to turn your life around, only to discover you can’t even force the corners of your mouth into a smile.

Don’t pin your hopes on anyone else. Don’t treat anyone as your salvation. No one is obliged to be your pillar of support, and no one is obliged to give you a hand.

Live on, whether in sunshine or darkness. Live on, whether with determination or in despair. Live on, whether optimistic or pessimistic.

Smiling depression means being able to make everyone think you’re sunny, cheerful, and full of positive energy, so they can’t sense any negative emotions. In truth, you just huddle beneath the covers on lonely nights, wallowing in despair and pessimism as you curse and hurt yourself.

This is an infinite-world novel. The unfortunate thing is that the protagonist is already suffering from depression before her strange journey begins, and the people around her fail to notice, making it worse and worse.

This story has nothing to do with salvation. It’s a story about companionship. There probably won’t be a couple.

Theme: Against salvation narratives. If you don’t stand up, no one will meet you as an equal, but please don’t reject other people’s kindness.