So, the joke goes something like–
(and stop me if you’ve heard this one before)
it goes something like, two kids with depression
walk into a relationship. Now, the bartender asks–
wait, shit, sorry. See, there isn’t any bartender, ‘cause,
let’s be honest: they’re not doing their drinking by the glass,
they’re doing it by the bottle. Okay. Okay, so,
the therapist says—but I mean, who can afford
a therapist, these days? But the antidepressants,
the antidepressants say,
“I haven’t worked in two years, but
my list of side effects is too long
for you to ever leave me. I
am where you learned to be needed.”
So they’re coping. Of course,
she’s forgotten how to talk about herself
in first person, while he
offers up his life’s story like it’s a joke
only he finds funny. Turns out
the world is just as heavy
on two sets of shoulders.
Two kids with depression walk into a supermarket.
Two kids with depression walk into a doctor’s office,
walk into a brick wall, walk into
the same bad day three hundred and fifty six times
and call it normal.
The only thing I know about this punchline
is that I’m not gonna like it. That it looks
like a hurricane of nothing.
Of repetition.
Of wake up, wake up, wake up.
Of moving just fast enough to be considered alive,
but only in the way a houseplant is considered alive,
or a creeper vine. Plenty of things are still here
simply because they don’t know how not to be.
My boyfriend talks about death like a place
he has tried to visit—like a destination
he is always pointed towards, even when
it is not the place he is going. For me,
I don’t bother aiming for an ending when,
most days, I don’t feel like I ever started.
What I mean is–
Depression is ugly.
And it’s easy to backslide when you
are trying to climb mountains,
but that does not make you a failure.
Two kids with depression woke up this morning,
walked all the way to tomorrow and the day after that.
Two kids with depression are still walking.
That might not sound like much to you.
What I mean is
we’re a couple of fighters
and we are still here.
In spite of everything.
Or maybe because of it.
What I mean is
suicide is not cowardice, but
it is, without a doubt, an act of bravery
to survive.
