Tag / depression

by Isla

Hidden shallows

In which I didn’t get the memo

It turns out my niceness is only skin deep. 

Beneath the surface, I spit glittering vitriol in an acid arc around myself. These spattering thoughts blister words into the dirt: ‘Join me in lockdown… feel this grief for a past life… falter here with me, in this stuttering uncertainty.’

But there are those who continue to grow within four walls, plucking opportune plums from a laden bough and making life sweet. They barely stutter at all.

The bastards.

I, meanwhile, simmer in my acid bath, my skin growing thinner with every slow second. The liquid blooms rose-pink and rises.

At some point I should stand up and wade out, before too much of me is lost. But the burn is comforting and the return of full gravity is too much to bear.

I’m staying here. Hip deep in shed niceties, I pass the time by drowning well-meaning platitudes until they dissipate to nothing.

by Isla

All the leaves are brown

In which the sky is grey

The post-holiday blues are sniffing at the door, scrabbling with intent at the letter slot. Anxiety gives a howl as she butts at the drooping handle, while Misery sits back with his old head resting on his paws, waiting for the inevitable opening of the door. Irritation nips at the others and gives a volley of angry barks at being kept in the cold.

Every song that plays on a playlist that I know to be filled with chirpiness somehow hits a mournful note.

I’m keeping the blues at bay by imagining myself launching into the blackened sky and flying higher and higher until I’m above this thickened layer of mist and rain.

I emerge into blazing blue skies and find the Sun’s fierce glow.

I dance over the cloud plain until the memory is locked in place and I can bring it with me as I descend back down to earth.

I nail another plank over the front door.

by Isla

On edge

In which I wonder where to draw the line

I can never find the edge where we stop and illness begins. 

The line that divides personality from disease is fractal, endlessly complex and barely perceptible. And the closer you are to someone, the more you realise that their illness invades every action, every reaction. 

I wonder sometimes who you would be if it were cut from you, leaving only the pieces that are actually you behind. Would your soul buoy upward with every sinew sliced apart? Would a rose tint engulf your vision after a lifetime of grey? Would all those barriers and obstacles and weights and troubles clatter to the ground with a tremendous roar as you finally shook free?

I suspect the shadow shape left behind by the carving would continue to whisper. It goes too deep now. Its flesh is your flesh.

And so I learn to love what has become you. I watch my own flesh begin to entwine with illness and cannot stop decisions from being nudged by this poisonous pairing. A scorpion’s sting lodged in its own back. 

We have become one and the same. Fraying at the edges.

by Isla

A pigeon named Anxiety

In which we meet a constant companion

Anxiety was small and wrinkly when he nestled into my chest cavity. 

Two giant eyes goggled outward at the world beyond my body, decided it wasn’t for him, and he settled back inside.  

Now full-grown with a handsome sheen, Anxiety makes himself felt. 

He doesn’t like breathing into armpits on trains, or overhearing people who roll anger around their mouths. He doesn’t like navigating new places, or new people.

Sometimes he doesn’t like leaving the flat. 

Two unsteady feet hold my stomach in a death grip, with a squeeze-claw-squeeze when he shifts. 

He flutters gusty wings in agitation, fluffing against lung and making it harder to draw breath. 

And then there’s the head bobbing. An endless tapping that fills my gullet and knocks again and again on my chest wall.

He’ll calm when he’s talked to, sung to, or breathed at. 

And he’s as greedy as his out-of-body brethren, deflating when fed.

I can’t evict him, so I paste on a smile,

And wish I had a pigeon named ‘Poise’ instead. 

by Isla

Dentally challenged

In which I choose my words.

Some have sensitive teeth. 

Enamel worn by the acid of life and the fracturing punches thrown by fate.

To you, who life has rubbed until all loss devastates, I’ll tell only tales of romance before it cracks, never stories of the broken pieces.

To you, so weighed down by clouds of darkness that you cannot carry mine too, I’ll give only the gossamer and tuck away dragging tendrils of sadness.

And to you, for whom feelings are glowing iron between icy teeth, I’ll give only carefully cultivated words to amuse, shorn of the emotions that tumble alongside.

I’ll brick away my broken pieces, my tendrils of sadness, my tumbling emotions, and keep each of you from harm.

But remember, there is more to me than meets your tooth.