Real Darkness Has Love for a Face

Ongoing

The male body is rarely regarded as a carrier of fatigue, anxiety, and accumulated strain. The outward appearance of “normalcy” is valued above inner reality. In this logic, vulnerability is erased; fear and exhaustion are replaced by routine, and depression reveals itself not through drama, but through repeated gestures, objects, surfaces marked by time, and pauses between actions.

Over time, strain stops feeling like something external. It becomes the familiar ground on which everyday life is built. Effort is no longer recognized as effort; it is accepted as the norm. Pain does not demand an outlet and does not seek a language. It simply takes up space inside. Silence becomes a form of discipline, and the absence of complaints is read as resilience. The ability to endure becomes a virtue.

Depression in such a reality has no visible signs. It does not look like a crisis and does not require immediate intervention. It asks for neither confirmation nor justification. Often it simply remains: an accumulated, unspoken tension distributed through the body, no longer tied to a single moment of beginning and offering no obvious end.

And then it turns into a statistic, a news item, a “no one saw it coming”. Another male silence that has reached its limit.