Depression is a funny thing - well, not funny, more bitter and occasionally intriguing at how quickly it adapts to new situations, to ensure that it always has a place within you - even when you are quite sure that you should be free of it in the right circumstances.
On gray days, cold days, rainy days - it seeps into my bones, weighs me down, exhausts me such that even though I know a task is simple enough to execute, it becomes utterly overwhelming.
On warm days, sunny days, days heady with flower blossoms and sea-salt and the slow stirring of heat in one's blood... somehow it is these days, the ones I crave most, that carve a hole in my chest and fill me with grief and longing.
These are the days that I know I should feel lighter and brighter, when my fingers are curled around a cup of coffee and a book lays open in my lap.
And yet.
And yet.
These are the days when the anger that fuels me melts into sorrow instead, when the dust motes glittering in the sun taunt me with all the could-have-beens of my past and present and future, when all I can taste is grief at the loss of my own self.
"Take a walk," people suggest brightly. "Get some exercise! You'll feel better!" I walk, often, down Memory Lane, only to find myself lost again in hard concrete alleyways, littered with spiked recollections that jab through the rubber of my sneakers and into my flesh.
Walking over flaming coals is a feat to be admired, but walking into your memories and finding yourself doubled over, heaving, with only bile in your mouth - that is shameful, and embarrassing, and you must pretend it away lest people become tired of your theatrics.
So I will sit here, in the sunshine, and grip my coffee cup a little harder, and try to breathe a little bit slower, and fight back the salt and iron of grief and pain, and tell myself that if I wait a little longer, the sunshine will just be sunshine again.
On gray days, cold days, rainy days - it seeps into my bones, weighs me down, exhausts me such that even though I know a task is simple enough to execute, it becomes utterly overwhelming.
On warm days, sunny days, days heady with flower blossoms and sea-salt and the slow stirring of heat in one's blood... somehow it is these days, the ones I crave most, that carve a hole in my chest and fill me with grief and longing.
These are the days that I know I should feel lighter and brighter, when my fingers are curled around a cup of coffee and a book lays open in my lap.
And yet.
And yet.
These are the days when the anger that fuels me melts into sorrow instead, when the dust motes glittering in the sun taunt me with all the could-have-beens of my past and present and future, when all I can taste is grief at the loss of my own self.
"Take a walk," people suggest brightly. "Get some exercise! You'll feel better!" I walk, often, down Memory Lane, only to find myself lost again in hard concrete alleyways, littered with spiked recollections that jab through the rubber of my sneakers and into my flesh.
Walking over flaming coals is a feat to be admired, but walking into your memories and finding yourself doubled over, heaving, with only bile in your mouth - that is shameful, and embarrassing, and you must pretend it away lest people become tired of your theatrics.
So I will sit here, in the sunshine, and grip my coffee cup a little harder, and try to breathe a little bit slower, and fight back the salt and iron of grief and pain, and tell myself that if I wait a little longer, the sunshine will just be sunshine again.
1 comment:
You don’t have to pretend anymore for the sake of others who don’t and will never understand. This was your struggle and only you only how deeply you’ve been stung. The pain will take a long time to fade but it’ll fade, and then you’ll flow. Don’t worry, you’ve got your anonymous readers and supporters who will pray for you. I wish I had found this out earlier
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