"The sadness starts in my stomach—
too familiar to be nausea. No,
it feels like slow poison,..."
The sadness starts in my stomach—
too familiar to be nausea. No,
it feels like slow poison, like
decades of swallowing depression.
I know better than anyone else,
I have always been toxic to myself.
The apathy waterfalls down from my back,
into my legs, gets heavier and heavier,
until my feet are blocks of concrete and I
am settling into the brick and mortar:
a front row seat to my home’s foundations.
With a spot like this,
why would I ever want to leave?
Anxiety is an IV drip, too thick to go easy
into my veins. It’s always just
under the skin. It’s always
the worst kind of electricity.
But the love—
the love I have always carried in my teeth.
They say you have to love yourself
before you can love anyone else.
It’s not because you won’t know how to.
Or because you don’t deserve to.
It’s because love is not enough to un-hate yourself,
and no matter how much they feed you,
it will taste like a lie you force down with sugar.
You will look for the day it sours.
You will leave it in the heat and
curdle it yourself.
And you will blame them.
Depression is not the Big Bad Wolf.
He doesn’t knock at the door,
blow the house down.
The monsters under the bed aren’t half as scary
as the gaping nothing that opened
like a sinkhole just under my chest.
Depression has always been
the stomach ache that never quits,
the uninvited guest in my body.
Depression is like the feeling when
someone talks shit about your best friend,
but you’re too much of a coward
to defend them.
It’s like that.
Over and over again.
Some days are just bad days.
I don’t always do right
by the people around me.
I can’t even do right by myself, yet.
- ANATOMY OF A RELAPSE by Ashe Vernon
