Living With Depression

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

By Zoe Schultz

And I don’t know how many journals lie empty, tucked in a closet I refuse to clean out. I don’t know how many pens go unused, barricaded in a random drawer in my desk. The drawer jammed half-shut with letters, keys, knick-knacks I can’t seem to throw out Because this comforts me, and I need to feel something other than the crushing weight of sadness. This drawer is me, and I am the drawer, you know, the one that gets stuck every day except one.