Waiting

Before you start reading this one, I will tell you this: this might read like a WebMD list of symptoms. I have suffered from depression in one form or another for a while. It’s one of those things that when you don’t have it, even people who suffer from chronic depression, it’s difficult to remember what it felt like from the deep holes of it. So for those who’ve never been there, I forgive you for your lack of understanding and empathy, for your lack of “right words”. I hardly ever have the right words for myself. “Procrastination”, “laziness”,” just get up”,”go for a walk”, “exercise will help”, “go make art”, “listen to music” etc. guilt-tripping someone to feel better while they are depressed… yeah, it doesn’t work. Do you really think we wouldn’t do everything we can to not feel better? If there was a cancer drug available to me and I was dying of that specific cancer and I wasn’t taking the drug, maybe there are very good reasons for it. Guilt-tripping will not help me feel better whether it’s cancer or depression. Also, sometimes nothing helps. Just friends showing up, just having a support system, that’s all that matters, that has been everything that has pulled me out of it. So if you are the +1 of someone with depression who doesn’t know how-to life, just be there. Just come hang with us, do nothing with us and do something with us. Just be.

By now you know, this was written from inside one of the wells, I couldn’t get out of.

I am waiting for days to become more meaningful. To hear from people who will make me happy. I don’t know who they are.

I am waiting for you to wake up.

I am waiting for you to come back from work.

I am waiting for you to come visit.

I am waiting to read the books I’ve been meaning to. To walk the streets I’d planned on. To call the people I said I would. To write to those I should. To do all those things I once told you about and all those I didn’t. I am waiting to feel better.
I am waiting to meet someone new. I am waiting to stop wasting time. To start feeling like me again. To be motivated. To do things. I wait, while I do other things. While I lay on the floor face down with a debilitating migraine for days. But I’m not waiting because I’m in pain. I wait because I can’t seem to get up.

I want the rage to melt into sadness and I wait for my sadness to gather enough momentum to push me forward into space. I wait to hear from you, I wait for us to go back to where we were, to who I was, while I scrub the steel in the kitchen and the corners of the stairs and the grease off the glass because I can’t scrub you off my hope and off my habit of waiting.
I wait for your name to pop on my phone.

I wait to feel motivated again. I wait to get to a point in the future where things are brighter where time is not wasted where simple words like love and connection are abundant and I am productive again and I am off the floor and I am not in pain and I am not waiting.
I want to get up and move. Up. Away.