Fall 2021 Online Edition

Living With Depression

By Zoe Schultz I desperately want to write something beautiful and meaningful.

Craving validation that what I write is worthy.

Do I actually matter?

I’m not sure, But give me a pen. Let’s see what I can do, but the words aren’t forming, and the language is foreign, And suffocating my body with dread is a monster named failure, and I can’t produce one thought that isn’t “Why am I sad?”

I have no motivation to do the one thing Keeping me alive, And every day, the blank pages scream at me, forcing me to squeeze shut my eyes ‘til I see black And clamp shut my journal.

My fingernails leave moon-shaped imprints on its smooth cover And every day I crumple a little more like sticky notes with lost causes written on them I throw at the trashcan, but I score no points as they all miss.

Even my trash can won’t accept what I have to offer.

A constant reminder that I have more doubts than I can count, and every day, I am less and less motivated to write about something real.

I want my poetry to be happy, but happy, I have been told, is a lie, And I try not to lie that much anymore.

Every day, I yearn to write.

Writing is my breathing, and breathing is how they say you stay alive, but now, I don’t know if it’s the breath or the air traveling from the lungs out the mouth 63