me versus depression

depression is that guy on tinder who you swiped right to when you were half drunk and half not paying attention, but who keeps messaging you and wont leave you alone

depression is a virus containing every fear and every regret and every sad feeling I've ever felt coursing through my vulnerable veins like storm clouds in the wind

i have spent much too much time staring at a wall, too weak and unmotivated to even shift my gaze

it holds me down like paperweights on paper limbs that no longer feel like my own

i have too many ideas, and so i act on none

too many hopes and plans that i believe i will never get done

i watched my mom drown in her own mind as she slept through each day and night

but now i know what it is like

i want to travel to thailand and go on a mission trip and intern for a vegan magazine and go to europe and work at a vegan bakery and design my own greeting cards and sell illustrated apparel and volunteer at a hospital and work at an animal shelter and help every person i can and befriend every stranger and wander the streets and perform spoken word poetry and take chances and have wild sex in your apartment and see indie concerts and sell art and live my life and change the world

and yet i sit

i stare at a wall, paralyzed, overwhelmed i cant move

i must do these things, but depression forbids me

it doesn't make sense!

i pound at the black goo from the inside out, i try to drain it from my body, i try to pretend it doesn't exist

but it tires every muscle in my body

it over-rides my every thought

depression is frustration, aggravation, it despises my dreams and crushes my hopes

i pop a pill but it defends

they say, think on the bright side, but there is no bright side of a body filled with darkness

they say, exercise, but immediately, my anorexic mind gets triggered

they say, people have it worse, and no i do not object, but how can that fact bring a smile to my face?

depression claims to know reality, it promises to burn the sugar coating off of life until i am a skeleton laying in sickly sweet ashes

depression chains me and starves me and even though today i am again not strong enough to fight against its choking grip

even though depression may have won some battles

i refuse to let depression win the war