A Depressing Monday Morning Essay

I ended last night scooping ice cream. At first I tried to use a big spoon, immediately throwing the first bit of mint chocolate chip I could pry out of the container onto the floor. I reminded myself that this is why I have an ice cream scoop and, despite it being gold and pink, it can be used for depression ice cream as well as sundae parties. 

It’s Sunday and I woke up hollow, scooped out in the deepest parts of me. I can physically feel a part of me removed. Empty is as heavy as the fullest glass of water. 

I resent that this is what I have to give you this week. I don’t even have the energy to pretend this was an intentional essay written for World Mental Health Day. I don’t have anything insightful to say about structural changes or de-stigmatization. I have no rolling sentences about light and darkness. And I certainly have no interest in being inspiring. 

I am not suffering well. I am suffering. It is exhausting to say it and it is exhausting not to. And nothing is more maddening than being mad. Mad and alone in this godforsaken body—I breathe only through the words of others whose mad minds understand.

From the unmad, I can’t handle concern. Living a life that concerns adds another pack to the already broken back. I think I might die, and I have zero tolerance for grief. I am grief. My empty cup is overflowing. My feelings alone are already aggressively expanding out against my fragile frame, threatening to implode this already dying body. 

The only thing I have anything for is the dark.

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I tried to bargain with God last week for the one thing my heart desires most. I offered up everything, then paused and said out loud, “but writing.” What a strange thing to not be willing to give up to gain your heart’s deepest longing. 

I guess words are my breath, and what is a desire fulfilled if one is not alive? Even in a dying body, one knows they must keep breathing.

I reject ending this essay with, “And so I keep breathing,” because honestly, while my lungs are going to keep forcing air in and out of me this afternoon, today something so quaint is such bullshit. Today I am going to keep laying in bed and watching TV. I am going to force myself to eat and apologize to my dog for yelling at him. And I am going to keep thinking about how this keeps happening and how chronic is one of the cruelest words in the English language. I am going to keep being mad and sick and physically distraught that this is my truth.

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Epilogue:

I wrote today because it is what I am supposed to do. It is the thanks I give to the writers and artists who are keeping me alive right now. Every word hurt today, and I know it was good. I am physically safe and in the care of the people that I need to be. I am giving you these words with a lot of mixed feelings, but with a faithfulness to myself.