By Wanda Deglane
In the end, I pull my own body
out of the half-dug grave, grumbling
under my breath the whole time. I eat
three meals a day and I socialize and
I use my coping skills and it’s work
and it’s always grueling but I still do it
anyway. I water myself even if I wilt
in the morning, especially if I do. I talk
about my sadness on my close friends
story and my best friends all heart emoji
react. I’m buying crystals in every color,
shaped like towers shaped like hearts
shaped like crescent moons and tiny
long-necked dinosaurs. I’m putting them
under the full moon in the hopes they’ll
make me a little less sad, a little more
stable. Some days I fuck it all up and
it’s okay. I’ll be stronger and smarter
when it comes back around, and it always
comes back around. The spiral staircase.
The lifelong visitor. The best thing I ever did
for my depression was accept that happiness
is not a state you live in. It’s not that coveted
holy ground you get to. It’s fleeting, just like
every other emotion. And it’s sprinkled into
every day, every moment. It’s waiting for
you to lift your head. You can eat your sad
for breakfast. You can watch it swirling and
shimmering in your bowl. A bad day can be
a bad day. A bad moment, terrible and
gruesome and cruel as it is, can only stretch
so far as you let it. Sadness, anger, despair—
all just as ephemeral. It’ll tear through you
and it’ll be excruciating but it’ll pass. I spent
years waiting for my life to change, for
my sad to bid me farewell. But growth can
never be begotten by hate. You can’t shame
and loathe yourself into a version that you like.
Only love and compassion have the ability
to forge and mold. I’ve been waiting to die
for so long, I forgot how to live. And god,
I’m still alive. And I am so incredibly,
impossibly in love with this stupid little life
I live. I am not a phoenix dying and rising
from the ashes. I’m more like a lizard,
regenerating its own tail. I’m a caterpillar
dissolving and eating its own brain.
I may not put out my own house fires but
I will always crawl out of them alive.
I owe myself that much.
Wanda Deglane is a poet and therapist from Glendale, Arizona. She is the author of Melancholia (VA Press, 2021) and other books.
Hot Pot Magazine 