Undertow

Today I am sad
Today I am not trying as hard as I should to not be sad
I should be trying to do yoga, or art, or read, or write or anything that may help my sadness..not
But I am not doing any of these things.
Instead I am trying to explain the sadness to my boyfriend
I am telling him it is not so much piercing as it is dull, but a sharp point all the same
It is a heavy weight
A boulder that sits in the quiet space between my heart and my stomach
Which is funny when you think about it because typically, my stomach churns my anxiety and my heart loves to sing really sad songs.
So I suppose that is a fitting home for my depression
The rock is my neighbor
It is someone I live with but i could describe it as unbearable
I tell my boyfriend
I wish you hadn’t sold your gun
not because I want to kill myself or anything but because sometimes I feel like shooting a hole in my foot would be the perfect antidote
Because sometimes a little physical wound really sedates that emotional turmoil
And I know I’m not the only person who resonates with that
Some people say “you should be grateful to just have your feet, be grateful they didn’t get taken from you in some horrible accident”
You are right, i say. I should be grateful. So why aren’t I? What pitiful, selfish, pathetic person is so ungrateful as to not realize how lucky they are for the things they have?
Me apparently.
And Do you see how easy it is for my sadness to twist words?
To push me deeper into that hole?
By telling me something that is supposed to make me smile
And realizing that I’m Not smiling reminds me again of how selfish of a person I am
I can feel the demon artist in my chest gathering some wet clay and adding it to the rock, shaping it into the perfect form of self hate
I say maybe I could just chop my hand off
I say surely chopping my hand off will make me feel better
I say because when your body is in pain your mind goes into shock and starts releasing chemicals that make you...relax and all the sudden that Boulder sitting on the inside of your chest isn’t so heavy anymore
So chopping my hand off, or putting a bullet through my feet really or even taking this shirt off the floor and choking it around my neck for a minute or 2
Sounds on par with getting a massage right about now
I don’t want to die, I say
I just want to kill... the sadness
I don’t want to die because I have children
If I die my children will grow up with abandonment issues
Wondering why I left them and why they weren’t good enough for me to stay?
And that is something i won’t let them endure
I would rather be here to endure
I would rather teach my children lessons
Even if that lesson is called “why you shouldn’t be a sad person”
I tell my boyfriend all this and he looks at me with large, concerned, Doe eyes and says “I don’t know a nice way to tell you this but, I think you’re nuts”
And I laugh
Even he is trying to pull me out of my hole
His hand is reaching out for me with all the ways he could take me from my sorrows written on the tips of his fingers
But I say, no.
I say you can pull me out when I’m climbing in
But now I am here
I am home in my hole
And there’s a bed made
and it’s really comfortable
I say all the regrets from times long forgotten are down here too
Reminding me that they still exist
They want me to stay and have a drink
So we can reminisce about all the things I’d been trying to run away from
Today I have vanquished myself within the darkness
I have already given up,
I am no longer in danger of going under water
I am under water
And don’t they say when the undertow takes you
You should never panic?
You should hold your breath and ride it out
Swim parallel to the shore
But don’t fight for the shore
Don’t fight for the warm hugs of summer
Don’t fight for the sun or the oxygen
Don’t fight
because fighting will only tighten the grip of the undertow
No today I am playing it safe
Today I am not panicking
Today I am riding it out
And maybe
When the dark handed current stops and lets me go
When my lips break the crest of those heavy blue waves
When I can open my eyes again and see the light through those salty tears
Maybe
Maybe
I’ll finally be able to
breathe