Content Warning: depression, suicide ideation, loss
I feel fragile enough to snap, but I have to smile, answer the phone, fix the spreadsheet, partake in capitalism, exist as a corporeal person, when all I am is a trembling soul who never asked to be here. I use this body I didn’t sign up for to breathe. Doctors, wellness influencers, & ancient monks at least agree on this point. When in doubt, turn gently to your lungs and breathe in enough of earth’s air to bring you back down to the ground. Today, however, the task of inhale… hold… exhale… feels a little useless. It calms the nerves just enough that I don’t burst into sobs at the first coworker to ask an innocuous question. Though breath alone cannot expel the bone deep sadness that would need to be sawed from the marrow. Breathing rhythmically doesn’t move me forward to grad school or bring my mother back… But I do it anyway because what else can I do? I refuse to remove myself from this stupid beautiful, planet before the fates decide it's time. I can’t just go catatonic and check out when there’s still so many books to read movies to see, people to meet, stories to be told, loves to grow old with. I must resolve to let these moments move through me, and to feel them fully, even—or especially when— they hurt the most. If I hurt, it means I’m still here, and for all the times I’ve wished I didn’t exist, I know in the deepest core of my being, that this sad, silly, sacred life is worth every minute it takes to live it.
I’m currently in the process of applying to grad school, and in order to get my transcripts I need for admittance, I need to clear an old hold from my undergrad that is keeping me from accessing them. Please consider donating or sharing the GoFundMe!
Want to read more of my work? Check out my latest book, UNVEIL ME: the complete duology & other poems, which features my first two full collections, as well as a number of new poems, and even a few which were first published here on this newsletter. It is available exclusively in Hardback & Kindle on Amazon, or as an ebook through my shop on Gumroad.
Visit stillthestars.com to find out how to get copies of my YA fantasy novel in verse, which features the Oreanam Oracle deck in the story.
Featured Photo by Cherry Laithang on Unsplash