Meet My Depression

I'm just a skin today, draped over a dusty, wooden, nearly petrified frame. I sag and slump in places that I can no longer suck in, stick out, or push back. The skin frays around the fingers and the toes just brush the floor. I am propped up on a coat rack, to be used another day, maybe when it’s raining.

In the wheel of life, I am either catapulting upwards into infinity or crashing downwards face first. I am writing, I am publishing, I am creating. I am unemployed. I’ve lost my health insurance. I’m wading into a future with no plans. And where I am on the wheel just depends on how much serotonin I have floating through my veins, and unfortunately, I believe I have some sort of vitamin deficiency or the likes that keep the serotonin from doing its job.

I am depressed.

If I’m still enough, I can feel the cells in my body rubbing up against each other. But I can’t focus on it for too long, otherwise I get the sensation of falling, like in my dreams or on a dipping road. I listen to my body and it speaks no words, but instead shakes its head at me in defeat. I can feel the wheel turning downward and my hair blowing away from my face as I fall.

It’s days like these that I just want to cry. It makes me feel crazy. I drank a nitro cold brew coffee in hopes of shocking my senses, but instead, it was just unnecessary calories. Ordering something with the word nitro in it also felt crazy, because it is crazy. Crazier yet, I am still operating at a low hum. My inner mother tsk-tsk’s and scowls at me. We could be using that sidewalk chalk! Reading 20 books each day! Remember you wanted to do that? Teach her the alphabet! Better yet, numbers! She doesn’t recognize her numbers yet! COME. ON. I am messing it up.

But I can’t. I don’t want torture. I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to bribe her with fruit snacks. I just want to be. Her, too.

I have no clue where I’m going or what I’m doing or if it’s even allowed to feel this way. And I don’t have a plan, either. If this year has taught me anything, it’s that we have no control. You can take steps, make decisions, and number items on your list from most important to least, but in the end, shit just happens. It always does. Shit will always happen.

And sure, I guess it just depends on what you do with the circumstances. But if you’re anything like me, you know you don’t have control over that, either. Anxiety can come calling like a cable company and depression will arrive unannounced like a drunken cousin at a holiday party. And then it’s not up to you anymore. It’s up to them.

Normal me would plow full steam ahead into the unknown. She likes a challenge! She likes freedom! She sees possibility and lights a match under it’s kindling.

But here I am. I poured a drink I’m too numb to take a sip of. And that’s when I know that I missed the doorbell ringing and the pounding on the door. Perhaps I asleep with my headphones in my ears. She must have found the key under the rock and made herself something to eat, leaving those crumbs…those crumbs that are always on my counter no matter what, before climbing into bed with me.

Oh, depression. Don’t stay long, please. I was just about to write a list of things I should be.