Member-only story
Unstuffed
As I get older, I find the lows of my depression dipping lower than when I was younger. Or maybe I’ve just grown tired of trying to suck it up, shove it to the back of my mind and get on with things. Maybe I’m tired of pretending everything is sunshine and roses when it’s not.
So, yeah, sitting here in yet another dip in my neurochemicals, I don’t have the energy to pretend that I’m even close to okay. That said, writing about it helps somehow.
It’s funny, but giving a name, a presence, a description to the non-descript cloud hanging over me makes it more bearable. I suppose it’s sort of like when you can give something a name, it makes it less scary.
Often, these descriptions come out as poetry. That’s what happened tonight:
I lay still on my bed,
Two tiny bits of material.
Held together loosely,
With nothing in between.
Inside out.
Raw.
Exposed.
Flat.
Neither use nor ornament,
Devoid of feeling.
Stuck.
Paralyzed in a sea of nothingness,
I try to move,
To find something, anything.
To fill me.
To replace the innards,
Stolen,
By a cruel thief in the night.
So I lay here,
Raw,
Exposed and
Flat,
Until the darkness passes
And I can fill myself with light again.
Basically, I feel like a teddy bear with the stuffing ripped out. That’s pretty much what I’m saying. And somehow, the simple act of being able to say that put a teeny, tiny bit of that stuffing back. Not enough to make me feel better exactly, but just enough to make me feel the slightest sense of power in an otherwise powerless situation.
If I can contain this thing inside my word fence, I know, in some strange way there’s hope. Maybe that’s crazy. Maybe it’s not. But for me, it helps a little and that’s all that matters for now. ;)
