My Therapist Says I'm Depressed

I have an unwavering feeling that I'm watching myself die. Everyday, everything and everyone I love are taking a step away from me at 12 p.m. (the time the sun rises for me). These fragments of my being are deserting me like a Polaroid photo losing faces.

The people I love aren't remotely aware of the departure I'll be making soon. And the things... the music, the films, the tv shows, the books, the theatre, the writing... are all exiting my life with full knowledge of the separation that's occurring.

I still sit and laugh with the things and people I love, and that is what confuses me more than anything. There are numerous moments where the happiness around me holds my hand and smiles in my direction, but those are fleeting.

My time alone does not bring peace but I am unwilling to beg for company. I am a wallower. And there is no one attempting to replace all I am losing. I am not willing to replace what I am losing.

I struggle with the action of placing my feet on the floor against the side of my bed. I find it to be a painful feat that only injures me more when I place my soles on concrete. But before I meet the outside, the minutes of preparation ravish my mind and body. I brush my teeth, I wash my face, I bathe, and I get dressed with an impenetrable lack of purpose. The nausea is increasingly getting worse, so I can't eat. The acid reflux of my childhood has returned to me. The panic episode has begun and I believe a marathon will be aired today. First there will be barbed wire laced with rubbing alcohol strapped around my heart. Then the elephants will sit on my heart with an eerie stillness. My heart will beat faster for dramatic effect. The migraine will venture into my brain in innumerable and inexplicable forms. With all this pain over going outside, my house reaches a level of warmth that exceeds temperature. It embodies safety. The creeks of the steps are like birds singing. The incandescent lights are the sun. This is my world.

On The Days When I Can Make it Out of the House

There is a scenic 11 block walk to my favorite train, of which I can no longer stomach going near because it reminds me of my voyage to school. I used to embrace Stuyvesant Ave with my eyes. In the fall, the 11 blocks, arose colors that hadn't been given names yet. The brownstones projected regal lifestyles, imparting themselves further into the sidewalks than my limestone home. Now I don't look up on this troublesome walk to the A train. I look at the cement, seeing the colors that have met their last day, the colors that no one acknowledges.

I am only able to complete the trip to school because I am not going as Jada. I do not give myself the opportunity to think. King Krule, Chance, Dylan, Cudi, The Smiths, and all my other friends lend me their lives for an hour. And all I want to do is miss my stop and sit with our pain.

I walk to the library to print poems I can't connect with any longer, poems that have been stripped of my pride. And as of today's date (whatever date that may be), I don't take responsibility for that. I am the victim in this instance. My writing is not something I consider a talent or hobby anymore, it's the burden of another task I can't complete.

There were no open computers along the side of the 3rd floor library, so I had to wait in line for the computer area designated to accommodate the masses. So many people were on this side that the air became unbalanced as soon as I got to the front of the line. I looked up, saw them, and knew that my music wouldn't protect me anymore. The music could float over me on the train, making me blind and deaf to all the people around me. In the school library, Hendrix, Cash, Ray Charles, Joplin all get drowned out by my thoughts. No one matters on a NYC train but I have always felt like I was supposed to matter here, in the institution of learning I was supposed to be known. I was supposed to help people and I have slowly become the dependent.

I scramble around the corner to see if my side has a seat available for me now. I need to get to the side that has desks pressed against the window, the side that has comfy chairs with partitions, preserving the people in them. These chairs face the wall, allowing their passengers to swivel in them but always bringing them back to the only object of significance, the wall.

It was the impatience that unsteadied the air, which made my brain tumble but left my breathing untouched. My mind was under direct attack. It had to be the lights circling me or the distance between me and the windows.

I am with the corner now and I am pulling it closer to me. The tremor has relinquished my hands. The cushion is easing itself over my back. The friction from the carpet is restoring strength to my feet.

I look back to view my windows that were now close enough that I could see my buildings. I love the commonness of them, how bland and yet massive they are. The small windows splayed out in rows and columns are so fantastically monotonous.

I watched the windows for an inkling of loneliness in another being and then the birds started to fall, hundreds of them tumbling one after another from the roof. The dreariness of it all, the pure repetitive nature of disaster was so unspeakably beautiful to me.

For a second I thought I was witnessing a mass suicide of pigeons. Then I realized they could fly. My imagination had somehow drifted back to me. I finally got relief. This diving operation that I envisioned drove me to write the previous paragraph.

That was the end though. Nothing else came of that image, of that day, and nothing probably came of that week. I really don't remember. I am given a moment of clarity and then spaces, so many fucking spaces. Swallowing me, Eating me, until death has to come and finally take my hands.

There is no effort left in my body. I am succumbing to it all, being washed over by waves of rocks. I am losing my sight. The beauty I used to be bombarded with crosses the street when it sees me coming. And occasionally I run for the art, I muster up dignity to reclaim the previous idea I had of myself.

The idea that I was special, that no matter what was put in my way or what I put in my own way, I would succeed. The notion that I was self-less, that I could always be depended upon by anyone at any time.

All these inward explorations made me collide with my subconscious. I saw that she would use me showing up for my family and friends as a way to not deal with my own problems. I was appalled that as long as I could be there for my loved ones I excused myself for not being present in my own life. That concept is the sole thing that sustains me. The guilt I feel for not giving my time and energy to the people who mean everything to me, without that caveat, zombifies me. Shame hardens my resolve, so I try to give more. The maggots begin crawling from the inside out.

I am terminally repulsed by myself.

I can't really detail any details that got me to this point in my life.

I guess that's a lie. I just truly believe it is all so miniscule and foolish, that specifying these circumstances will only embarrass me further.

I used to think I knew who I was. It's almost amusing now because I am essentially the same person, I am just old enough to recognize all the aspects of myself that have been festering. I thought I had what every other human was still searching for, self-love. I remember telling my friends as a kid that they had to be able to spend time with themselves before they could be in a healthy relationship with someone else. There used to be nothing I loved more than getting through my lists of hundreds of movies to watch alone in my room with a good snack. I would dance through the house when I had it to myself. Read aloud, so the characters could act out their situations in front of me. I wrote because it was the only art form that had discovered me. I wasn't an observer or an audience member, I was given permission to produce.

I took all the beautiful things I loved and abused them. I needed them to feel good, to avoid my real feelings, and I poisoned their purity. Writing was my only release and I lost that over a year ago.

I didn't know how close to failure I have always believed I was.

Or I forgot.

Before the test to get into a Magnet School for Kindergarten, I was crying profusely. The proctor of the test was unnecessarily mean to 4/5 year olds but I honestly think I cried because I just knew that I wouldn't be able to follow the instructions. I couldn't worry about passing the test because I couldn't get beyond the stress of possibly spelling my name wrong.

I got into the school and I stayed there until 8th grade. I tutored kids throughout nearly every grade. Teachers asked me to help with their classrooms and grade tests for as long as I can remember. I played chess from about 4th - 6th grade. I won 16 trophies and 6 medals. (I was so disappointed when I just counted them and that's all there was.) I made lifelong friends. The majority of the rest of the class knew and treated me like I was someone of importance. This was the highlight of my life.

Throughout those 9 years I cried during class exams and Statewide tests, even though I always did well. I cried after every chess game I lost. I won 13th place at the Chess Nationals in my division in 2006, but quit after not winning a trophy at the 2007 Nationals. I haven't played a game of chess in years. The procrastination for assignments got worse every year but I always got it done. At 9, my gastroenterologist said I had the colon of a 70 year old. They said I had a Type A personality and I was making myself sick.

I am not sure if this is accurate, but I believe the moment my mom and I took the bus to Midwood High School so I would know how to get there, I began having chest pains. I call them panic episodes instead of attacks because I don't get shortness of breath, it is pain that lasts for days.

Twenty years of existence is nearing my body and I just want to retreat into adolescence. I want to stay stagnant about as much as I want to be a winner and I equally have a fear of both. I see my body bent backwards under a stick of my own formation. Thick and expanding in all directions, it hovers over my body, breathing on my nose. I just stare at it (momentarily closing my eyes) stuck in my own tears, so limbo is what I should be called.