PERSONAL ESSAY
This Anniversary, I’ll Be Better
And other lies I tell myself before the depression hits
I grieve in cycles.
Most of the year, it isn’t obvious I’m a broken shell of the woman I was. I manage, and quite well sometimes, to be funny. To be engaging. To look as though I’ve glued myself back together, less the stray component here and there I simply couldn’t find in the wreckage of my former life.
Then it’s November again, and before I know it, I’ve spent weeks without leaving the house, and I’ve haunted these rooms without so much as powering on my laptop.
I sometimes just forget to live.
I start to do the things I know aren’t healthy. I sleep too much. I refuse to make plans. I don’t answer my phone, I haven’t since December, actually.
I recognize the pattern, and every year I vow I will fix it. I will do better, I will be stronger, not this fraud. Not this sham.
Again, this year, I have failed.
It’s no longer acceptable for me, socially, to grieve in this manner. “It’s been 20 years, can’t you get it together?” more than once has been asked.
No. No, it seems I can’t.
