The Depression in my Bed

Was not due to a departed lover, I did not roll into a sleep warmed indentation in the sheets of a stealth encounter. There was no shroud.

After negotiating with the alarm I rolled over and looked into your beady eyes and your beetling brow and asked groggily what the hell you were doing there. You were propped on your stunted arms and looking into me closely, and you made no reply.

I rolled to my back and ignored you, fifteen minutes until the alarm sounds again, and I am hoping you were some fragment of a strange dream and when I throw back the duvet and bolt to the shower you will be startled into oblivion, of course you and I know that it doesn't work that way.

And I dozed off again, and dreamt of GW and when I awoke you were perched on my chest and I felt that you had fitted my heart with a kryptonite anchor, and it was sinking, sinking, sinking into the tar black of a pitch sea.

I ask, "Why have you come back?"
"I have missed you."
I, meekly, "go away, please, please go away"
"but my thankless friend, it's such a pleasure to see you struggle"

And so I threw off the duvet and bolted to the shower and indeed you were not startled, you didn't even flinch. You hovered as I stomped down the hallway, bleary eyed and fighting tears, and then you gallantly passed my a kleenex when a snorting sob erupted, and I declined to acknowledge you and wiped my nose on my forearm, and got in the shower.

And the hot water was a hot reprieve until you passed my my razor and snickered under your breath, and my spirit wilted like a hot house flower, and I hung my head.

And Depression towels me off, with a cursory swipe, leaving beads of water to glisten on my collarbone, and pool at the base of my spine, leaving me cold and vacant, leaving me to shiver in front of the treachorous mirror. And all the while Depression is whispering in my ear, a lullaby of insults, a litany of faults and as I turn to flee towards the bedroom Depression says offhandedly, and by the way, you're fat.

and to my horror, my cringing submission chants, it's right, it's right, Depression has a point!

And I dress in the half light with my back to the mirror and you sing to me, you sing the nobody loves me song in falsetto, and I hate you for it, your distorted warble and your furrowed brow are like so many lethal ice daggers needling through my defenses, I can feel my soul begin to shrivel as my thighs exponentially expand.

I drop to the floor and pray.

And you say, "this child is just the overture, you know it well, soon the timpani and tin drum will have reduced you to a quivering mass on the bathroom floor. I will throttle all of the joy from your life, I will suck you dry and spit you out, and the good misery junkie that you are you will come back with the promise of your jugular, and you will spend thousands of dollars on therapy and you will dry swallow the happy pills that they give you, and you might reduce me to a flicker of a shadow, but when there appears the slightest chink in your armor, I shall be there, the depression in your empty bed, hungering for you like a faithful friend. I am insipid, I am insidious, I am infinitely patient"

You dogged me all day, at my heels like a sycophant who knows the tables have turned. You made me snipe at unsuspecting colleagues, you made me grow angry with an employee because her hair is unmanageable (and it is like it's own sentient critter atop her head, and my god that girl is so sweet as to be suffocatingly cloying) thus securing that special place in hell reserved for people who loathe well intentioned russian girls and earnest lesbian choirs outfitted in green sparkly smocks.

And so Depression, I will not cower, not this time. I will fight you and I will gnash my teeth. I will be like Gandalf when he falls to fight the Balrog, except I will look like Cate Blanchett and be able to do the marvelous vocal sleight of hand, "YOU SHALL NOT PASS"

I will curse you with every breath of my being, you shall not throttle my joy, you shall not reduce me to a quivering lump of flesh on the bathroom floor, I shall not heed the nobody loves you song, and you beady eyed, beetle browed motherfucker, you will not say that I am fat, because I am personally going to shove my foot up your beetle browed ass, and then administer a waxing with hot candle wax, so how do you like them fighting words, ASSHOLE!!!!