The D word

I live with Depression. As I write that I already hear in my head a voice saying “Don’t go there”. I had this weird thought earlier about how I feel in America, there’s this idea of emotion being bad. That one should somehow lessen their emotions, make them palatable to a very dry ass environment. That phrase reading the room could only have been crafted here in the states. I think most people hear depression and think of it as this person who sits in a dark room, unwashed, crying their eyes out. And while those sort of moments can happen, it is not necessarily a constant simply because people with Depression are like everyone else. We still have to shit grin at assholes with position and deal with long ass commutes and take all the detritus the world throws at us. If I speak for myself and perhaps what I can imagine as a connector for people who live with Depression is that alot of time is spent trying to actively avoid emotions, alot of time is spent putting on faces and putting that best face forward to face the world. You may be in the deepest of waves, at your lowest and you still keep trudging forward. Or at least that has been my experience. It’s this very personal occurrence that sets the stage usually unbeknownst by others. I find it my own personal irony that I have not utilized my therapist as much during this pandemic. There’s a point when you just get tired of crying, it can feel sometimes like you’re a broken record and it is irritating to feel no relief. It almost makes the work that one does in therapy that extends to the world feel like nothing. Like I’m little engine-ing myself I think I can and nothing is working out.

I’m a Black transgender woman. My life will always have this particular level of obstacles to navigate at the expense of me always feeling like I’m losing or running in place. I’m part of a tribe that gets shitted on by everyone. Our survival seems to always be up for question and when you facing all the isms, all the phobias, all the lack of’s and all those pesky statistics, how the fuck could one not be depressed? My life expectancy is 35 in the so called ” Greatest nation on earth”. That shit weighs heavy on me. Violence , all kinds of violence follows my experience even when I’m dead. Shout out to all them actresses and writers and politicians even of my ilk who have made it. They are those icons we should all aspire to be. But the reality is that road while filled with hope is always full of these poisonous, eroding potholes and too often that journey comes to an end. I think we die in so many millions of small ways before we actually get there. I know that I have. I’m of that Sequoia lineage though, Dark and large and majestically beautiful. And they’ll keep hitting and trying to knock me down. And I don’t go or I may fallow a bit but never completely hit the ground.