The parade...

This morning I woke up deeply depressed. I no longer have a relationship, a best friend, nor a job. I'm already in debt and I'm about to go deeper into debt to try and pay for school.

Lately, I keep having a recurring dream where I wake up and a small dwarf is sitting on my chest. His weight is not impossible to bear, just a constant pressure. We talk of what it is like to suffer from debilitating smallness and Billy Barty. When I wake, the dwarf is gone, but the pressure remains.

This morning I had to choose between staying in bed depressed, or getting up and facing the day. The first always seems easier, but the latter is what I have to do.

I walked to Harvard Square.

It's Memorial Day and a parade was passing. Going right up the middle of JFK Street. Boys in ill-fitting suits playing the oomp-pa-pa of the tuba and girls with acne playing the clarinet. It reminded me of my childhood, driving to parades all over Utah Valley to watch my brother Dan play the trombone in our high school's marching band. Even now the sound of a parade and the band sort of excites me, the hopes of standing on the curb and having candy thrown to me, or having the boy on the scooter wink at me. This morning was no different.

And now I am trying to remember what it is to be happy.