*tw mentions of depression and weird relationships with food
My apartment is an unhinged jaw, and food is a poison I swallow—and that’s how I realized I’m depressed.
The only reprieve I’ve found, the only gauze packing for this gaping wound is you. You in the park under the cherry blossoms laughing. You a short walk to a new coffee shop. You a bright morning in the park with tulips. You the in the heat, condensation on cups overflowing with the taste of tang and lowered inhibitions.
The only moments of reprieve I find from my short gasping breaths is exposure to your humanity and in witnessing you because I cannot find joy in my own reflection.
I didn’t know. I didn’t know the lingering haunt behind every effort in the last few months was a ghost I thought I’d cast away. And I also cannot believe I didn’t know. I feel the light leave my own eyes with every click of my dead bolt.
I feel like a door to door salesman fraudulently claiming a joy and existence that only lays on the surface and despite my valiant effort has not pierced the depths of my soul.
It was the inclination to poetry to feed my soul while starving my body. Everything turns to dust in my mouth right now. I question myself for how I’ve shown up. Will you read this and think I’ve been faking it? Will you think I’ve been functioning with a facade?
Maybe I have because I feel out of my depth—I have stretched myself so far from who I am that the only reminder is being with you. My love for you fills the space right now where love for myself seems to be missing.
I think this is a common experience for someone like me. Someone who is on the precipice. Someone just crusting the earth’s surface to bloom. So I will not devalue or erase what I’ve done and said in this bokeh flare I’ve viewed life.
I meant every single word—loving you has kept my feet on this earth. It’s offered the practice I need to help my spirit settle in these new bones.
Now I know. Now I understand. I can release the fear of an unavoidable reality. I can ask for help. I can ask for love.
I’m depressed. I have been for a while. I’ve worn the shroud, draped myself in the cloak, come out of the other side. That is not this, thankfully. This time it wilts, like the heavy leaves on a monstera. You are the bright indirect light. A repotting in process.
I realized I’m depressed—have been for a while. And that’s where I am for now.
in case it wasn’t clear the “yous” are multiple people—the day I write a public declaration of love is the day you know I miraculously got married.