Untitled
It is 9:29 PM.
The clock says one thing but means nothing altogether.
I press a button and your voice proceeds to seep through speakerphone, somehow less distant than it seems.
"Hello?"
"Hello," followed by the obligatory how-are-yous.
I am fine.
"I am fine. I'm okay."
"Are you sure you're okay?"
.
.
Questions are by their nature wonderful challenges for the human brain. It takes me two seconds to decide whether it is a challenge in the sense of a test, or that in the sense of a difficulty.
But my brain somehow convinces me that the answer to that dichotomy is neither, that the question is, in this instance, yet another obligatory statement in the friendship checklist.
I smile weakly even though I know that it does nothing for my voice and merely pauses the weeping.
"Yes."
.
.
I read somewhere that depression makes you 'mute yourself for fear that your internal wailing will wreck the vibe for others'. But in this instance, between you and me, I am simultaneously ringing with futile talk of self-hatred and absolutely silent in the realm of substance. I'm a school bell without schoolchildren to notify and to inform. Reams and reams of "I don't understand why you are friends with me" seem to annoy you more than intended, and yet offer no measurement of the true depth of this enveloping darkness, this silently unsheathing sword, this unwrapped single blade.
You spend an hour and twenty minutes convincing me that upbeat music will switch my mood. I am almost persuaded that r/GetMotivated will lift me out of this depressive stupor and that a fun meme will give me the key to enjoying this corporeal existence. Your job tells you that a methodical and sequential mode of problem-solving will lead you to the ultimate conclusion that any problem can be solved in a given number of steps.
But neither the purity of your heart or the all-encompassing nature of your exploration into the numerous ways I could be "happy" can supersede the fact that the mere occupancy of this body gives me hell. Utilising it is another battle to wage and, if able, to win.
.
.
The cockroach that emerged three minutes into the phone call has graced us with its presence once again, unearthed itself from the depths of my open suitcase.
Beneath the covers I feel its phantom legs prance on the soles of my feet, sharing in the comforts of sleeping in a large canopy bed.
Suddenly invigorated with the sense of purpose we had discussed earlier, which I had thus far only attributed to "the giving of advice", I charge at the cockroach with the mist from a travel-sized can of hairspray.
Within seconds it lies trapped in drying fixatives, the room is filled with airborne chemicals and I take a bedroom slipper to the dying embers of its existence.
.
.
Standard Operating Procedures are for the regulation of workplaces, but the mind is a barely conquerable set of mean little bureaucracies. Therapy and medicine are the two basic tenets of a safe work environment for the human mind, but then there are stories about Harvey Weinsteins, horrible bosses and other such unmanageables. The cockroaches of the world, as they say.
"Have you told your therapist about this?"
"Yes."
But it only goes so far. My treatment plan is a map where X does not mark the spot, and the search for gold has been so wrought out that it is no longer feasible to even imagine what something everyone says is so shiny must look like.
.
.
I keep saying I am not a good person, that I am broken, that you can just hang up if you want, but I hear no such silence, even when I create the opportunity in the form of long heavy pauses.
I give you three months’ worth of long heavy pauses before you will soon realise that cockroaches like me abound in the world, that we confound even the best of intentions with our unwillingness to accept that we are worthy of love. We are nothing if not creatures escaping into the nearest open suitcase for several calming breaths, in perpetual anticipation of the slipper, the can of hairspray, even the screaming when we are spotted. We alarm even the burliest of men, and when we eventuate in final breaths there are more of us biding our time in the distance.
It is best that we disappear.












