If you live with someone that is depressed, the truth of it -

Host:
The morning air was gray, like ash suspended between light and shadow. A thin rain had been falling for hours, tracing delicate veins down the windowpane of a small apartment overlooking a silent street. Inside, the smell of old coffee lingered with the faint echo of last night’s arguments.

Jack sat on the floor, his back against the wall, a mug cooling beside him. His eyes, those cold, steel-gray eyes, stared into nothing. Jeeny sat across from him, her knees drawn up, her hair damp, a wool blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

For a long moment, there was only the sound of dripping, breathing, and the low hum of a city too tired to care.

Jeeny:
You know what Josh Thomas once said? “If you live with someone that is depressed, the truth of it—it’s not that dramatic. It’s just a bit, kind of, ‘Here we go, this is what we’re doing today. This is sad. But we’re gonna get through it.’”

Jack:
(dryly)
He’s right. People romanticize it—depression. They think it’s storms and shadows, but it’s not. It’s toothpaste you can’t open, laundry you never fold, and days that feel like wet paper. It’s mundane misery.

Host:
A clock on the wall ticked unevenly, its second hand skipping now and then, like a heart with a nervous tremor.

Jeeny:
But that’s exactly what makes it so tragic, Jack. Not the drama—the absence of it. The quietness of the suffering, the way it seeps into everything ordinary.

Jack:
(shrugs)
You’re making it sound poetic again. That’s the problem. People need to stop dressing pain in metaphor. It’s a chemical imbalance, not a Greek tragedy.

Host:
Jeeny looked at him, her eyes soft but steady—the kind of steadiness that hides trembling underneath.

Jeeny:
Maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s chemical and tragic. A body’s wound and a soul’s ache—they don’t cancel each other out, Jack. They live in the same room.

Jack:
You can’t live life based on aches. You have to keep moving. That’s what Thomas meant, isn’t it? “Here we go, this is what we’re doing today.” You just go through the motions until the fog lifts.

Jeeny:
That sounds so… mechanical.

Jack:
It is. Life is a machine that doesn’t stop because one gear rusts.

Host:
Jeeny’s fingers tightened around her blanket. A train wailed somewhere far off, its sound slicing through the rain like a memory unwilling to die.

Jeeny:
Do you ever think—maybe the point isn’t to get through it, but to be with it? To sit beside the sadness, to treat it like an old friend who just needs company?

Jack:
(scoffs)
That’s dangerous. You start treating darkness like a friend, and it’ll move in permanently.

Jeeny:
Maybe it’s already living here, Jack. Maybe denying it just gives it power.

Host:
Her voice trembled, but her words landed like stones. The rain grew heavier, like the sky was trying to listen.

Jack:
You talk like sadness has a soul. It doesn’t. It’s an absence, Jeeny. It’s a void that wears your face when you stop fighting it.

Jeeny:
And yet you’re sitting in it. Drinking cold coffee, staring at nothing, pretending you’re fine. That’s not fighting, Jack—that’s surrender dressed as realism.

Host:
He flinched. Just slightly. The kind of flinch that only happens when truth brushes a wound you thought had healed.

Jack:
What do you want me to do? Cry? Scream? Light a candle and talk about feelings? People survive because they numb out. It’s not noble, it’s just… efficient.

Jeeny:
No, people survive because someone sits next to them and says, “This is sad. But we’re gonna get through it.” That’s what Thomas meant, Jack. Not denial, but companionship.

Host:
The room grew still, as if even the air wanted to pause. The rain slowed. The light dimmed. In that fragile quiet, their breathing became a kind of language.

Jack:
(softly)
You really believe that helps? Just sitting there? Saying the obvious?

Jeeny:
Sometimes the obvious is the only truth that fits the moment. Not grand advice, not solutions—just presence.

Jack:
Presence doesn’t fix brain chemistry.

Jeeny:
Maybe not. But it reminds someone they’re more than a brain. That they’re a person.

Host:
A shiver crossed Jack’s shoulders. He rubbed the back of his neck, a small gesture of weariness, maybe regret.

Jack:
You always make it sound like love is some kind of medicine.

Jeeny:
Maybe it is. A slow one. Not the kind that cures, but the kind that keeps you alive long enough to heal.

Jack:
That’s poetic nonsense.

Jeeny:
(quietly, but with fire)
Then why are you still here, Jack?

Host:
The question hung there, fragile as a glass ornament. Jack didn’t answer right away. The clock ticked. The rain whispered. The world waited.

Jack:
Because I don’t like silence.

Jeeny:
And yet, here we are—in it.

Host:
Her words were soft, but they split something open. Jack laughed, a low, broken sound, like gravel under footsteps.

Jack:
You win. Or maybe nobody wins.

Jeeny:
No. We both do, if we understand what the quote really means.

Jack:
(curious)
And what’s that?

Jeeny:
That life with someone who’s depressed isn’t about saving them or fixing them. It’s about being there when everything else is gray. It’s about saying, “We’ll go through this together,” and meaning it—every boring, beautiful, tiring day of it.

Jack:
(after a long pause)
You make it sound like love’s a kind of endurance.

Jeeny:
It is. It’s not romantic; it’s resilient.

Host:
The rain outside began to soften, each drop turning into a whisper against the glass. A beam of pale light crept through the clouds, touching the floor between them.

Jack:
You know… I think I get it now. It’s not dramatic. It’s not about big gestures. It’s about showing up when everything feels small.

Jeeny:
Exactly. Love isn’t loud. It’s just… there. Quiet, ordinary, stubbornly present.

Host:
Jack nodded, the lines around his eyes softening for the first time that morning. He reached for his coffee, took a sip, and smiled, faintly.

Jack:
“Here we go,” huh?

Jeeny:
(smiling back)
“Here we go.”

Host:
And so the day began—not with hope, not with despair, but with something quieter. A kind of truce. The light shifted, warming their faces, blurring the edges of their fatigue.

Outside, the city stretched awake. The rain stopped. The world, indifferent yet tender, kept turning.

And inside that small apartment, two souls sat in the quiet truth of Josh Thomas’s words—
not trying to escape the sadness,
just living with it,
together.