Depression is My Goliath
Give me a slingshot
My memory is delightfully odd.
Childhood recollections elude me, but I can remember the commercial for Cymbalta with eerie accuracy. The wind-up wooden doll, the litany of side effects, and the words, “depression hurts.”
Sometimes, I wish depression hurt, but it doesn’t. It simply feels the way I do as I let my eyes bore twin holes in the light grey wall: listless…and empty. Heavy.
Too heavy.
I tried to write and my inner critic came for me, crumpling my attempts into spitballs and launching them at the back of my head. And so, I put my head down.
I stopped trying.
As a mental health worker, I am the first to preach that healing isn’t linear, but it’s tough to swallow the medicine we so frequently prescribe. I don’t want to.
I don’t want to. I just want to stare at the wall.
Depression is my Goliath, but most of the time, I’m no David. What’s easier than hating my writing is not putting pen to paper at all; makeup was and is and always will be easier than self-love.
But today, I am trying. Trying even though I know I’ll hate this piece of writing too. Trying even though, right now, self-compassion feels like a funny joke.
I am trying, even though my best efforts seem laughable. I suppose that, to the rest of the world, David’s slingshot was laughable too.
