Is that somedays I am a numb white. That on days like this one,
I come from phone calls of activism, from please to just be more active.
Just get up and do something, anything.
The world wants me to be active, and activity like my psychiatrist says
is the cruelest catch-22 there is in a mind like this.
The world awaits, and all you have to do is find the right combination of medication. The word "all" struggles to escape my mouth in anything but pure cynicism.
What the world doesn't know is that to find that witch's brew — the right concoction — it could take one to two years. In the meantime, just get up and work, walk, breathe, breathe, breathe.
Breathe white, and choke on it until you're forced to get up and drink water.
Your throat is too dry for this apathy, this is life or death,
and it's relentless and a motion ultimately. Ultimately and objectively you have moved.
I have moved. That's what's supposed to cure me of this depression.
I've always thought white would be the color of depression.
A color so motionless and stuck in a time that doesn't know time.
White whispers sweet nothings deep into my mind.
That's just what it sounds like — nothing sweet. Just ask Anne Carson.
Pick up a copy of Eros the Bittersweet. Read Sappho. Do something.
Anything. Just do something because White is the color you have to fight,
struggle against, for you to climb into the car, all groggy and limp
because your mother needs to pick up her dry cleaning and in a situation like this,
how on earth can you be left alone?
It's ridiculous how much energy white drains out of you. It's cruel and relentless.
So cold, but you've left the house and you're on your way to get the dry cleaning
because even if it's nothing great, it is something.
These are the baby steps you're aiming for.
Stop being a misanthrope and realize that these umbilical relationships are worth holding onto.
Clutch onto the white and don't let go. It's relentless. I know, but you have to fight it.
That's what they say anyway, and you're starting to think that yes, Gertrude Stein had a point. Convoluted, but isn't it strange how that word rhymes with polluted.
We're all just words, and birds are most themselves when they're in flight.
Flight rhymes with white. This world is connected, isn't it?
We're back to umbilical relationships and holding onto them.
It's worthwhile, so do it. It's a step when the only word you can muster is—no.
I understand the worth of my mother and her patience, it helps add droplets of color to the white that is slowly brush-stroking my brain.
Be gentle on my brain, the texture of the paintbrush could puncture the surface and then white would seep inside. We don't want that.
It's too much to handle. Too much to deal with when you're depressed.
White really is a troublesome color, and that's only evident when none of the medication seems to be working. Patience really is a tiring thing.
How am I supposed to be active when patience is the treadmill, I am running full speed on.
I think when my patience runs low and I run relentlessly and endlessly mentally
that I am sad today because I have been sad for so many days.
This sadness is becoming a way of life for me, and I can feel melancholy being engraved deep into my white bones. My white, white bones.
The Starbucks barista doesn't know how white my skin is becoming but she knows me by my first name, and on days like this
one when human interaction seems like a chore (what doesn't feel like a chore though) hearing my name from the mouth of a
stranger feels like adding droplets of color onto the white. Into it.
This, too, is an action.
