Let Me Tell You Something About Depression.

(This is a poem that I had originally written with the intention of performing)

They say you feel sad all the time, I beg to differ
I do not feel sad, always. There are times when I laugh so much
that I think I just overreact on the days I suffer,
but the thing that remains true is that that only happens
once in a blue moon, when I do, in fact, manage to get
out of my bed, choose a pair of jeans over a pajama instead
and join my friends to watch a movie they had planned
we would, but from which I had withdrew, as late as I could.
They seem to think that I talk and laugh among them
so it is so absurd an idea that I may even have a reason to feel
differently, when in fact, the truth is that the times
I am with them, is when I am truly different, for they haven’t seen
me in my natural habitat. The days, the low days, as I call them
are stretches of days when all my troubles stem
from a single root, I sleep too much, but that I something I cannot help.
These days I do not wake before noon, when the world has done
half its chores, I cannot but wake up from my snores, and
even then, I lie in bed, till my stomach has growled some angry words.
But I beg it to keep quiet as I try to go about my business,
to attend the classes that I have left and not think about the ones I did not,
but then, the cursed bed pulls me its way, and wills me to sleep again and again
till the ancient moon rises and all the trouble of classes, I almost forgot.
These days the world feels weird as if I am eating sand,
road trips, movies, going out, bathing, eating food, all feels like a scam.
The days are long and the ceiling fan seems amusing, there is emptiness
around me, the world seems like a hole, a void in the dark that nothing can complete.
There is silence, the phone does ring and the doorbell too,
the silence screams louder, emptiness fills the room and there is emptiness still.  
These days, I hardly talk to anyone, and Solitude is my friend
and these are day when I don’t get out of my bed, for days on at end.
These are days that I don’t get out of bed, so I have no reason to look in a mirror
that reminds of my bruised, broken self, and I turn the lights dimmer.
Darkness feels bliss as the blackness reminds me I am alone
and I smile a little to myself, and think about every soul I know.
The Darkness and Solitude, my two dear friends, find for me great reasons,
why my friends who I took years to trust might not like me anymore
and thus begins the cycle of self-attack as my words carve scars in my esteem
 and on and on and on it goes, until my veins are clean.
And when the entire cycle happens three four times and again,
the sun finally rises, but I am a desolate survivor, there is no one to help,
and so my critical self tries again to build walls so I don’t hurt,
not realizing that I am the victim and I, myself, the killer.
And thus begins the healing, till I feel my feel my veins fuller.
On days like these, I talk selectively, and my voice feels kind of sick
and they ask me so and I wish I could tell them, I am mentally unfit
but all I say is I am fine, and there is some stress in my life,
and in this time I smile, I make it my façade, it hides my real self
and all the misery and the sadness that I had just felt.
And days later, just as I feel something close to being happy (that is when I laugh)
 it all start again, the laughter fades, my ears ring, I feel myself receding
unwillingly into that haunted land, where few have ventured, separately
and made friends with Solitude and Darkness and their friends: Loathe and Despair;
Finger nails scratching, dragging my own self as I am pleading,
crying in vain, hoping someone stops to listen, but it is an empty wail
as it all starts again, it all starts again, it all starts again and yet again.

 

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