It’s strange for me to share something like this. I don’t always know how to talk about my struggle with depression, and I usually don’t want to. Sometimes I feel like there are multiple versions of myself and they appear at different times. I feel so completely one way one day and then the opposite the next.
Despite my desire to not talk about it, depression is something that needs to be talked about. It’s something that can be helpful when learned through the eyes of those in the midst of the battle. Often I find it easier to say that I have anxiety, but not depression because it comes with so many more negative stigmas.
I don’t want to be looked down on. I don’t want to be seen as sick or messed up. I don’t want to be broken. I don’t want sympathy. I’m not lazy when I lack motivation. I’m doing the best to fight something that consumes and twists my thoughts until I can’t think straight. Depression keeps me locked up in a mind-numbing box, and it’s hard to escape.
Writing helps me find my mind again. So during a bout of depression, I wrote this poem.
Sometimes I find that poems are powerful when you hear them read out loud by the poet. Here’s the audio recording of it, just in case you feel the same way:
Dark Nest, Infest, Pest
The darkness isn’t so much
what scares me
it’s the emptiness
the loneliness
the hopelessness
the haunting feelings that choke me
trip me, strip me of a rational brain
train, track, track follow, derail
ingrained worthless
pointless, stupid, worthless
pointless, stupid.
That hollow grip
that drip drip drip
on the forehead
the thoughts that separate
divide, oppose, cloud
fake, real, fake, real
make, bake, cake: eat eat
dread, dread, dread.
Focus, disappears
decision-making runs out
the pressure starting, stopping
holding, releasing
creating, destroying
suffocating, breathing
Insanity is sleeping in my bed
it stole my pillow
beat up my blankets
I can’t find it’s face
to punch it through a wall
ball, hall, call, fall,
fall, fall, call, down the hall
the ball bounces
no one catches it
and I’m lost
in a dead end, in a sewer, in a box.
What scares me isn’t the darkness
it’s never getting out.
Aubri
Thank you for sharing Aubri. You are so gifted with words. I too know the pain of depression, maybe not now, but I have been there and I don’t know when it will visit me next. I remember a very dark dark year in particular when the darkness was so thick, and hopelessness filled me. I remember struggling , trying to figure a way out. Only to find it was a deep dark pit with slippery sides and no way out. Then one day a realization came to me. Like David said in the Psalms, “even in the darkest pit you are there. There’s no where I can hide from you”. I realized finally it was okay to be there because God was with me even there. He imprinted on my heart and mind this message, that even if I could never do another thing for him, even if I couldn’t sing and worship him, if all I could do was sit in that pit, He still loved me and sent his son to die for me just as I am. I was okay, I wasn’t alone. Once I accepted that and accepted where I was, slowly by slowly the light of his love slowly trickled in. I didn’t have to figure it out. I was in his hands. Never again have I felt such depths of despare as I did that year. There have been rough patches but never as bad as that again. I pray for you that God will bring healing to you as well in his perfect timing, but mostly that you will be able to rest in his loving hands and know that it’s okay to be where you are. You are not alone. ❤️