Tumblr* lied.
There’s nothing beautiful about depression.
Hear me out loud and clear
when I speak about this in agony sheer-
depression is not a melancholy song
or poetry flowing free celebrating the wrongs,
no,
depression is a cry for help
that never even materialized into a yelp,
just sitting there,
gripping my esophagus hard,
piercing my mouth’s insides
with its shattered shards;
depression is that one story
I want to release and flood the world
but it only leaks as stutters
and stammers weakly hurled;
depression is my dirty secret,
the skeleton I waltz with in my cramped closet;
depression, my friends,
is a lot of things
but it’s never beautiful.
Last Monday night, I couldn’t sleep at all
but the following Tuesday,
my body just refused to fall out of the bed-
anxiety was keeping me awake but resignation wanted an eternal slumber
and the number of times
the monsters would sneak
into my sleep
and seep into my already troubled dreams
is a different tale altogether
and that is not beautiful.
I’d sit sprawled on the off-white floor,
my chest heaving against the shut bathroom door
as my body would reject the one morsel
I had managed to push down my throat;
and yet, sometimes,
I would have six meals a day,
junk food making its tainted way
to my churning stomach,
hoping to fill the void
that was simply hell-bent to stay;
I would be lying amidst crumpled potato chip bags
along with smelly, unwashed rags my clothes had become
and that is not beautiful.
I would pick out strands of my hair,
pulling them off one by one off my sore scalp-
streams of matted strings
flowing out of me,
falling
out of me
and landing with a noiseless shriek
at my funny strange-looking feet
with their awkward toes
and that chipped black nail color;
sometimes, I wouldn’t shower for days
but then on others,
I’d stand below the pelting spray
for hours and hours
till my skin would become
a wilted mass of battle-scars-
either blue by the frigid downpour
or a raw crimson hue from the scalding bath
and that is not beautiful.
The stained sheets on my bed
would house the torn bits
of my old journals
as I’d doze off
against the fogged looking-glass,
my face caked
with remains of dried tears,
with chewed-off lips aged beyond years
and that
is anything
but beautiful.
I tried hard to make poetic gains
out of my not-so-poetic pain
but only vague rhymes and incoherence
were what tumbled out of my mind dense
with overgrown vegetation
of clashing thoughts,
sprinkled generously
by weeds of uncertainty
that sprang up ten at a time,
often more;
and only after scores and scores
of crumpled paper balls
hurled by me
at the harmless barren walls,
do I finally halt my unrelenting assault
as the realization finally dawns-
deep inside,
we all know,
us- poets and writers
and painters and fighters-
we all know our art cannot play much of a part
when it comes to mending the seams of our bereaved hearts
but so what?
We are still allowed to try and hence, that’s what we do without ever questioning why.
Depression is never beautiful
but we want it to be
and so we try,
hell, some of us even stumble and die
in the process
but a few somehow linger on
to the hope that maybe
-just maybe-
what’s happening to us
is not all that bad;
it’s beautiful, in fact,
and if we can get ourselves to believe the act,
maybe it’d stop hurting like it does.
Depression cannot possibly be beautiful,
I agree,
but oh- I so wish it was.
Maybe, the ache would be worth it all then.
Or maybe not.
I suppose we’ll never really know.
Cuz even though it could have been,
depression
is not beautiful.
* Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking website that allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users’ blogs.
