What does depression feel like?

Like I want to sleep forever

but every time I fall into that

blissful unconsciousness,

I hope I never come back out

that it’s just a peaceful send off

So long…have a good flight

Don’t call when you get there.

Because…that would be weird

And freak everyone out…

It feels like…

I can’t feel

sunshine, or joy, or pride, or hope

I’m a slab of granite,

wavering on two crumbling pillars of sandstone

stuck in quicksand and sinking

and I don’t care if I go under

in fact, I welcome it and hope

it suffocates me

with calm commands,

breathe in…breath out…and hold

like an MRI of your final moment

but it never tells you

to breath in again

Depression feels like

I have no energy in my synapses

and even if I did, nothing I could do with it

would be worth anything to anyone

least of all myself

Depression is a gray, weighted blanket

only not for comfort, it’s for the unsurmountable load

that life gives you to carry

and you just can’t find a good enough reason

to carry it anymore;

but you can’t find your way out

from underneath it either

Depression is seeing through eyes

that are a movie screen

to an audience that lost its will to care

lacks empathy, doesn’t recognize

Art

or love

or fleeting time

or beauty

Depression is a cage that I shout meaningless words out of,

fake platitudes

in hopes no one else falls into the cage next to me

I’m fine!

You’re fine,

you’re fine, baby girl

you’re fine…

I love you

it’ll be okay

It’ll be okay is tattooed beneath my skin

so that I don’t forget these

lines to a play that I rehearse and repeat,

back to the world that asks

Are you?

Okay?

I look down to the scars I once cut

but can’t cut again; they’ll see

Children learn from watching

so I don’t show,

I tell…

I tell lines

I tell them the lines I need to tell

I tell them,

Though the world is burning around us

and women will never be safe

and human lives don’t matter

cattle for the breeding grounds or

simply to slaughter to the gods of capitalism

Stop!

don’t say that…

don’t project the hopeless…

Read the line

Read the provided line

not the truthful line

of scars….

It’ll be okay

I’m

Okay

You’ll be…

… will you be?

Okay?

Depression is lying to loved ones

so you never have to worry that you’ll be

their downward spiral,

the same scythe of your mother’s loss

that cut you down

Cause we’re all Ok

we just need to…

I just need to

Remember my lines