July 21, 2018:

I'm on a couch at my friend's house in Washington State. My ponytail is back tight making me look jowly. My middle is soft, my lips are hidden behind the usual false smile. I'm now permanently anti-contacts, wearing gold-rimmed granny glasses as if it were 1967. I'm pale as death which is appropriate. I'm basically a walking corpse.

I'll clean up after this. The drugs are gone, my hair is short ish and still jet black. The depression is ubiquitous but no longer critical in the crisis sense it has been. Women at work literally and I do mean without exaggeration literally fail to recognize me. A senior manager introduces me as "boyishly handsome" as I speak to the company.

That's a moment of obvious improvement. Still without the depression treated it'll be another seventeen ish years before I'll again consider myself fully awake. Rip Van Winkle and a Half.

Right now: not there yet.