i don’t get full blown anxiety attacks. my depression is a dull percussion prickling perpetually at the back of my mind. it is the crippled, grotesque thing that sleeps inside me like rosemary’s baby. my depression isn’t slamming doors & blood-burnt wrists & toothache tears. it is my twin who i ate in the womb who now resents me. it is an invisible kiss pressed like a gun’s mouth to my neck. it is ever-winding & ever-present & sometimes, it camouflages behind the hollowed out fossils of smiles that collect dirt & rot against my face. it is a flame i cannot put out, swallowing my system. it is quiet & sluggish & a slow death. it is lungs that softly sink within its quicksand depths. it is a blown out candle and a night spent numb as an ice age against my pillow. if you didn’t search for the spots that leak, the morgue silences, that involuntary twist of tired lips, you wouldn’t even know that i have it. and i know. i’m not valid. it’s not the kind of depression they write songs about. it’s not the kind of sorrow people find interesting. i’m a bone picked clean of flesh. i’m cascade. i’m speed bump. i’m spilt coffee. i’m collapsed flower pot. (question: what do you do with a body that doesn’t know that it’s a body?) that it’s meant to feel & touch & breathe & respond? a body that’s already lost its soul? (answer: you leave it to the mercy of the hawks and hope to god that does the trick).
“We emotionally manipulated each other until we thought it was love.”— Warsan Shire
If you’re not losing any friends then you’re not growing up.