me and august 07. 2016

i thought i might write about a fear, a loneliness, or tell you a story about a plan that was thwarted. i want to talk all about these things, but deep depression on a saturday night is working hard to erase any evidence of a desire to do anything. i’m not new. this is a thing that happens.

i’m sure in the morning these blind scrawls will look nothing like i had hoped they would. they’ll make no sense, and what i thought to be insightful sentiments will come out looking like a four year old child’s practice alphabet sheet. but it’s okay – if i cannot remember what they were, they probably were not that important.

maybe it’s better with the lights out – and then you cannot see what is all around you and what is inches from covering your skin in a tight blanket of questions and criticisms and self-doubt and you cannot see the shadows that are your only friends at this hour.

i cannot feel the medications any longer, and the air is evil and mocking and trash.

in the morning i will feel different. i will probably not feel better, but it will be a different flavor of sadness.

there is so much thinking. i learned long ago that trying to turn my brain off at these times is just as easy as swallowing bricks. instead, i try to fantasize about a life that isn’t spent alone in dark rooms listening to the walls scream at you and through small cracks in the ceiling you can see enough faint traces of daylight to recognize that it is a real thing – but it’s so far away and so incredibly inaccessible that you’ll never feel it on your face. so it will always remain somewhat foreign. it’s not cold in here. it’s terribly warm and you are sweating and your lips have dried and are chapped and they are one extended sigh away from shattering.

when my back is turned to the door somebody opens it quietly, and they leave you some food and water. you’ve seen her before. she’s beautiful and you would recognize her face even though a mile of solid darkness separates the two of you. you will crawl over there eventually and as you eat and drink you can sometimes remember that she loves you.

many times in these fantasies i hear a ‘click’ and if i listen very closely i can hear the door swinging open. i don’t move. it could be a trap – i could make my way over there to the open door and just before i can pull myself through to the other side something grabs me by my hair, pulls me back into the room, and through my tears i can see a blurry outline of the door shutting once again as whatever denied me freedom giggles maniacally behind me. each time this happens, my heart breaks just a little more, and i’ve learned that each attempt is just the same fucking calamity.

so tonight – august 6th – i sit still. i’ll let that door remain open for hours and days and beyond and when they finally send somebody in years from now to sweep out what little is left of my body, they’ll know that i shoved myself into the corner – as far away from that door as i could possibly get. they won’t understand why i didn’t just walk through, why even when i must have been dehydrated and moments from death i didn’t use the last of my strength to drag myself out to the light. they’ll never know how many times i was so close, only to be denied and be forced to spend hours tangled in confusion and regret and sadness. they won’t know how it sounded or how it smelled because everybody’s experience is different.

tonight – august 6th – i’m watching a muted television because it’s like being around people i don’t have to interact with or even listen to. but it helps to know they are there.

outside, i know there is still a world that is still alive.