by Janae Gamaraor, trying to explain my depression to my parents—again do you remember when it was fall? i tried to tell you that i have depression, that i’m not eating, that i feel nothing, and you brushed me off. told me i was being dramatic. told me i needed to make some friends. right now -- i just need you to listen. in the era of the unbecoming, i am not myself. i am in my bed, always. i am in my room and never leave; the thought of meeting someone new is so unbearable that i'd rather just confront nothing except my own face staring back at me in the mirror. i can’t recognize who i have become. mom, my depression is a bear, only i don't know what kind of bear it is and i can't remember if you're supposed to play dead or run away so some days i do both. it's always the wrong choice. my depression is not the type of bear that hibernates. it is always hungry, always yearning for something i cannot give. it is always snarling, angry and larger than me. it never rests. it turns my body into a battle, me against bear, me against animal. it is winter and i want to claw my way out of my skin. no, papa, you're not getting it: if my life is a circus, then my depression is a tightrope act, except i'm not a professional tightrope walker. so most days i'm low. i mean -- i’m falling. i am falling into myself and i don't know how to stop and sometimes i don't even want to. it is spring and i am tired of putting in work and work and work and becoming smoke, all this impossible escape trapped inside a body. you're not listening to me. what about this? my depression is a drain. my depression is a drain and i am an earring, lost in its vastness, always falling, always trying to fight against the current and make my way back up. it is an exhausting battle and i can't even remember who i was without this. it is summer and i’m still here, existing in the yuck of it. i want so badly to want to be alive, and i want to be someone you’ll be proud of but i don’t know how. i need you to understand what i mean when i talk about my depression because i can't keep fighting this battle alone. i want you to know what i mean when i say i couldn't make it to class or i can't get a job. i need your understanding. i need your patience. please, i need your help.
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by Janae Gamarai. i ask him if he could fall in love with me, somewhere or in some other time. he laughs, and my breath becomes a ghost in my throat, the words a tomb waiting to be set free. i swallow the unsaid conversation whole, let it rest in the pit of my stomach. digest. break down and multiply like the dirt beneath our feet. he laughs, and i laugh, and we are bent over, sides splitting with the uncomfort of it. how funny, all of that potential. how funny, all of that pain. ii. there is no apology for the way i live beneath the soil, beneath the blood and the sweat and the hungry creatures lying in wait for all of it. an image's negative is still the image, just in some other universe where everything is the same, but different. am i not a negative of myself, from somewhere else? do i not react in the wrong way to everything? laugh when i should cry? stumble and fall when i should walk straight? do i not exist where everything tells me i should not? make a home in the ground, call it freedom? live when i should die, call it a seance in which i attempt to make peace with everything that never was? iii. in the emtpiness, the only thing to call you back is your beloved. iv. there is no dark, desperate thing hiding in the space between my lungs. this must be where fear lives. this must be where hurt becomes. who knew that magic could look like this, so beautiful and bloody and demanding a place inside of an empty body that houses nothing, not even the thing that smells of sunrise? he says, i love you but not with his mouth. i laugh. i say, sure and my tongue becomes an army of bees, becomes an angry buzzing, becomes every loud thing screaming to remind you that it's alive. v. the story goes like this: i am everything and nothing all at once. the land makes its peace with me. by Janae GamaraContent warning: mentions of suicidal thoughts my last class of the day is on the fourth floor and the window is open and the window is never open and sometimes wasps keep flying in and honestly it gives me anxiety because i've never been stung before and what if i'm allergic and what if it hurts and what if it swells up and i die? and i haven’t been to this class in probably a month and i’m sure everyone is staring at me like that one kid who only shows up for the final and everyone is like “you’re in our class?” and my palms are sweaty and my leg is shaking and i’m sure i’ll be called on at any moment by the professor who probably hates me, or at the very least is tired of my bullshit. and honestly i haven't even done the readings for today but my last class is on the fourth floor and the windows are open and i think about jumping out of it ten times before class lets out, all within the space of an hour and fifteen minutes and i wonder what it would be like. my body hitting—whatever. the thud. the way it sounds when you accidentally drop your hardcover textbook. or maybe the quiet of a pencil slipping from your hand, almost an accident. and me. i think about throwing my pencil out the window and then following it out, a dive, but then what if i miss and accidentally hit some girl on the head and the pencil sort of rebounds back to me? and then i will be so full of shame that of course that door to the sky would beckon me into forever. and so what? what does infinity taste like? and what if this is a cry for help? and what if i refuse to admit it's a cry for help because my pain can't be valid if someone else has more pain, right? so i didn't jump out the window. i didn't jump out the window because i'm here, i exist, still, in spite of my brain's best efforts to convince me otherwise. i am still here because even though most days my anxiety and my depression make me never want to leave my bed, there are still those moments: my professor recites something in russian and i am reminded how beautiful other languages are, how we convey so much through sound. i watch my favorite play and remember how lovely life is. my sister’s laugh is often my favorite sound. a comfortable moment of silence with someone i’m close with is how i say, thank you. sometimes i pretend that string lights are my own personal stars. i tell my ex i love her, but i don't say it out loud. leaves still change color and i cannot stop them and do not want to. a warm shower is sometimes the kindest gift i give myself. i am around my friends and i am so glad to be alive. there is so much beauty in the world, and i am learning how to find it in everything. |
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