you be good, i'll be gone
reckoning with death in a good way
in a dream, one of my brothers gifted me a bird. i didn’t know how to catch it when it started to fly away. i stumbled to chase it, but when i looked down, i saw my legs—misshapen and broken. there was that feeling again, of being a toddler, relearning how to put one foot in front of the other. i am still teething, still too young in a body that has only recently discovered it has no expiration date.
the most difficult truth i’ve faced after (quite successfully) eradicating my chronic suicidal ideation and monolithic depression is that wanting to live is so much harder than wanting to die. i wanted to die so bad that i didn’t do a fucking thing about anything else. i couldn't. nothing could demand more attention than that of my devotions to and daydreams of death. i used to scoff at the dismissal of mental illness, defending my every pain point and begging for everyone to understand how *sarcastic tone, please* no one believed how much pain i was in. and most of it was seemingly blameless. utterly aimless, devoid of purpose. but i swear, on my once-despised but now moderately-cherished life, that i was in that much pain.
the problem with pain like that is that it obscures one’s ability to see themselves without it, to consider who they might be, and to question whether the person beyond the pain is inherently flawed. am i worthy of redemption? when the magnetic fields rewire my brain, will i finally face the repercussions i have so narrowly avoided? i thought depression was the void within me; that i was an empty chassis and that nothing would ever feel full. what depression really was for me was the sopping, sticky and prickly dark matter that clung to everything.
when i was younger, maybe 4 or 5 years old, i was visiting my grandmother with my mother in connecticut. my memory of the house where my mom grew up exists solely through this very specific memory; visually, i see it only through the lens of that day. i have to wonder if it was even a real day or merely a fiction i extracted from a patchwork of dreams. it flashes in my mind, tinted, almost like an old photograph. perhaps i’ve seen an old photograph of that place from when my mother was a child; maybe that is one of the only ways i have ever allowed myself to see the world through her eyes.
on the day i recall so paradoxically—hazy yet vivid—i walked into the backyard by myself and looked up at the hill behind the house. i’ve never been particularly good with geography, but this hill was staggeringly steep, stark, almost like a 90-degree plateau that I could barely see the top of. it was covered in trees, and perhaps there was a clearing up there; that part i am truly unsure of. a black cat was perched at the top of that hill, or mountain, and i’m starting to get nervous that my memory has failed me, that everything could be a farce. i have no desire to tell any lies, but i am terrified to actualize that space again in real time.
“did this day happen to me?”
i ask myself out loud, directed at the spirit of my grandmother. she has been gone for nearly half of my life, yet i still wonder what she would say. she would probably tell me she didn’t remember, just as i would tell her i didn’t know her well enough to remember her. one day, i will tell my mother that i didn’t know her enough to remember her. one day, i will tell her how sorry i am and it will be too late.
driven by the mere sight of a cat, i began to climb upward. i felt almost possessed, like a victim of cordyceps fungus—a living organism racing toward the light, yet hindered by a rapidly rotting brain.
feels like a flash of lightning to remember, yet i feel like thunder rolling down.
somehow, i was back on the ground, closer to the house, and i ran into my mother’s open arms as my grandmother ushered me into the kitchen, frantically asking where i’d been. once again, i had lost time to a memory in the making.
standing and shaking on the linoleum floor that i can still smell, i felt them pull what looked like hundreds of prickly burrs from my skin and clothing. i might have cried as i peered past them, through the back window, and toward that hill I thought i had nearly conquered. all i could tell them was that i wanted to get to the cat. i just wanted to play.
the prickly stuff inside me has come out, as if we had never fully removed it—like i had swallowed every last one of those burrs from the garbage can. i thought i was empty, but i was full of spikes and rough patches, scar tissue upon scar tissue.
pulling the inside out, i have become empty in a new way. could it be a good way?
remove the bad parts but acknowledge they existed. knowing they hurt me, i still didn’t know how to let them go. but what remains beneath that now? i have space to fill and space to take up—space i still don’t know how to hold on to. i don’t know how to hold on to much of anything.
no one could have told me how ironic and hysterical it is to overcome that type of depression, like it’s Mount Fucking Everest—a fantastical feat—to then stand at the bottom and still feel that subtle twinge of sadness. no, it’s not the same mountain or a metaphorical hill; it is just sadness— a little bit empty, a little bit lonely. but every exhale has a purpose now, and what a pressure it can be on my spirit.
“everything i've ever let go of has claw marks on it,” haunts my consciousness and feeds the narcissistic fleas i’ve desperately tried to starve. remnants of myself linger everywhere i’ve wandered; i’ve ensured that much. yet what i have failed, and continue to fail to do is tend to the wounds inflicted by my own claws. i let them bleed while i ran and ran, until the river of blood i inadvertently drained could no longer touch me. but lately, i’ve drifted into a place of stillness. maybe i’ve made it to the clearing, and there are no more burrs in the wind. there is no black cat, the incline wasn’t that steep, and there is no one rushing toward me or away.
there i am, and i must apologize for forgetting to mention that my memory of that day has always been from a bird's-eye view. the last time i drank orange juice, when i was seven, is the only other day of my life i remember from that perspective—out of body, hovering just a little behind and above myself. is this what they meant by the devil and the angel on my shoulders? could it really have been that simple?
there i am, existing within a space i am learning to absorb as well as occupy. my feet are firmly planted on the earth. my heart aches for more peace, yet it continues to beat. i have no idea what shape i take, nor do i know the right tongue to speak.
there i am, alone, where i must be for now. you stay here; i’ll return for curtain call.
“but i swear, on my once-despised but now moderately-cherished life, that i was in that much pain.”
I’m so glad you’re still writing.