thunderstorms
mum asks how are you?i’m good, mum. lying to her, lying to me.
see mum, the truth is something i stopped telling long time ago.the truth hurts. whenever i start telling parts of it, it hurts you. which hurts me.
see mum, my depression is a shapeshifter.most days, it is like the sun on a cloudy day. you know it is there, but you don’t feel or see it. there’s a part of you that remembers sunlight – a distant memory. those are the good days.on the bad days, it turns into thunderstorm on a warm summer’s day.heavy and loud, so loud it scares you – all over again, no matter how many thunderstorms you have seen before.
on the bad days, i feel like a hostage inside of my head. inside of my own little prison, made of anxiety and fear.
mum asks aren’t you afraid of dying?no mum, sometimes i am afraid of living.
see mum, on the bad days my insomnia is sweeping me away into the depths of darkness. with darkness being the ultimate relief.
so i go on walks. trying to walk away from the thunderstorm, trying avoid confronting the empty side of myself.
sometimes my depression drags me back.until my bones are the forgotten fossils of a skeleton sunken city,my mouth a bone yard of teeth broken from biting down on themselves.the hollow auditorium of my chest swoons with echoes of a heartbeat,but I am a careless tourist here.never truly knowing everywhere I have been.
when i let a glimpse of truth shine through my thunderstorm, mum doesn’t understand.but mum, can’t you see that neither can i?
after sabrina benaim, “explaining my depression to my mother” (2014). the stanza about the sunken city borrows her lines.