A New Day
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Another sunrise and I tell myself I’m okay.
I fill up the water bottle and pack food for the day,
even though I don’t know if they are okay, and I can’t
feed the world,
but I can feed myself
today,
and I am
okay.
I plug in my earphones and blast a motivational video.
“I am thankful for grace.
I am thankful for humility.”
I continue reciting all that I am grateful for and I repeat,
“I am okay. “
It’s okay that I’m not talking to my parents.
It’s okay that they don’t have jobs.
It’s okay if they’re doing drugs again,
It’s okay if they’re lying again.
It’s okay if they are sober,
and telling the truth,
and if I don’t believe them this time.
It’s okay if I don’t know.
My family will be okay.
I am okay. I am okay. I am okay.
It’s almost convincing.
The sun sets and with it the mantras quiet.
All the thoughts, I’m trying to hush away with long conscious breaths,
walks to clear my head, working out to increase serotonin, and eating to stay healthy.
They all fade into darkness as my counselor’s words
pierce between the positive affirmations and the
sorrow I’ve shared.
“Have you considered antidepressants?”
I already have trust issues,
but her saying this after I tell her,
“I’m afraid my dad might try
to kill himself—again—
if we aren’t talking
or if he thinks he’s lost me,”
after I tell her how responsible I feel for his wellbeing.
After I tell her my brain spends most of the day
trying to solve the world’s problems—
all of them—
big and small, and everything in between—
with no success.
After I tell her I don’t want antidepressant drugs, but
I’ll consider CBD.
She tells me they will help me feel joy and happiness,
but I’ve felt those emotions without drugs.
So, why even go there?
Suddenly,
I no longer trust her judgment for suggesting antidepressants.
Suddenly,
my thoughts are clothes in the spin cycle;
picking up speed,
they whirl and revolve
faster and faster—
and I am there, in the center of it all
realizing this pace,
this tempo,
this momentum
is the hurried pace of my thoughts, and
this is the mode I am most familiar with.
All the patience, clarity, and peace
I work hard to focus on all day teeters on the edge of a cliff.
I am short of breath,
alarms are ringing in my body, and tears are causing my chest to shake.
I don’t want to be empathetic anymore.
I don’t want to care anymore.
I don’t want to be sitting on a couch staring at a woman who just got back from her cigarette break to ask me if I want to try antidepressants.
I wipe my face,
sit in the car,
cry for another 20 minutes,
and drive home.
The next day the sun rises.
I wake up, and the early morning carries the sound of my dead mother’s voice as she says,
“Rise and shine sunshine,
my one sparkling design.”
I carry her words with me to my notebook.
I strive to be the light she saw in me.
I strive to make my life mean something,
to do something worth doing, and
to make her proud
wherever she is.
I remind myself not
to glamorize depression,
but to speak about it as a universal,
underlying suffering that we all face.
I remind myself
it isn’t sexy to be depressed.
It’s messy, it’s sad, and it kills people.
There is nothing glamorous about suicide,
and just because I am another artist who sometimes
grapples with depression,
it does not mean that all artists have to.
I won’t have it one day,
and I’ll still be an artist,
and I won’t have to convince myself,
“I am okay.
It’s a new day.”
Love always
Danielle Mallett
