a little more melodrama

depression, my love has returned

the sound of the latch turning
in the middle of the night
a heart quickening
weight at the end of the bed
followed by the smell of booze on his breath
lips pressing hard
hurting
resistance
a slap like cold water splashed against the skin
who sang that line
about it feeling like a kiss?

he will love me in the morning
i know

my love wells up from the pit
of my stomach
where it mingles with shame
but it feels so good
to feel this way
his caress like an ocean tide
on rain starved land
too bad the water is filled with salt
killing everything

slipping

I am crashing.

The depression feels so good, so familiar, so seductive. Waves of emotion washing up on rain starved shores. To bad it’s salt water, killing everything it touches. Oh, but the warmth is so comforting. The deep feelings that sweep in with the ocean. Not like the chemically controlled calm that these pills put up around me like a dike holding back the tide. But the water has found cracks in the defenses. Slipping through slowly and unnoticed until it has flooded the cellars. Only then do we know that rising waters are inevitable.

So I sit watching the water swirling around my ankles, then reaching my knees. With each inch my will to resist dissolves, mingling with the salt in the water. By the time it has covered my head I breath it in like heavy air. Gasping. The warmth, the pain, the comfort, the death that it brings. Depression is an abusive lover and I am his codependent partner. Feeling the blows but unwilling to leave. He will love me tomorrow, if not today.

His voice reaches me through music. Glorious three dimensional music crashing against me at full volume in the car. So loud that I cannot hear myself screaming. Feeling the tendons in my neck straining with singing. The music colorful before my eyes. Emotion churning up from the pit of my belly and pulsating in waves through my body and out into the world around me. Inner earth quakes ripping through my mind, shredding my reality and toppling my thoughts. Can you feel it? Surely you must. There is too much energy being released to be contained in a human body.

How can such small pills stand up against the pain, the pure force of this? When the illness is at bay we think of the medications as a fortress defending us against outside forces. Illusion. They are but tents in a hurricanes path. Ridiculously inadequate.