There’s a poem I heard about two years ago that changed my life. Now know what I mean when I say this poem changed my life. I mean that it made a huge impact on me, my mind and my heart, it not only spoke to me but it taught me about myself, it made me not feel alone and so crazy, these words are in my mind and I think of them very often. When I first heard this poem I saw the author read it to a crowd in a video and there was something about the way she read it, I felt it with her. When I looked up the poem and read it for myself I began to cry because I wasn’t just feeling for her I was reading what I had been feeling in almost the perfect words. This poem was written by Sabrina Benaim and is titled “Explaining My Depression to My Mother: A Conversation.” The mom in this poem, to me, represents people and how I have felt trying to explain what I went through with my depression and what I still deal with to others. Both my mom and my dad were incredible when I was in my darkest days and have never questioned my depression for a moment, and for that I am grateful.

 

Explaining My Depression to My Mother: A Conversation

By Sabrina Benaim

Mom, my depression is a shape shifter.

One day it is as small as a firefly in the palm of a bear, The next, it’s the bear.

On those days I play dead until the bear leaves me alone.

I call the bad days: “the Dark Days.”

Mom says, “Try lighting candles.”

When I see a candle, I see the flesh of a church, the flicker of a flame,

Sparks of a memory younger than noon.

I am standing beside her open casket.

It is the moment I learn every person I ever come to know will someday die.

Besides Mom, I’m not afraid of the dark.

Perhaps, that’s part of the problem.

Mom says, “I thought the problem was that you can’t get out of bed.”

I can’t.

Anxiety holds me a hostage inside of my house, inside of my head.

Mom says, “Where did anxiety come from?”

Anxiety is the cousin visiting from out-of-town depression felt obligated to bring to the party.

Mom, I am the party.

Only I am a party I don’t want to be at.

Mom says, “Why don’t you try going to actual parties, see your friends?”

Sure, I make plans.

I make plans but I don’t want to go.

I make plans because I know I should want to go.

I know sometimes I would have wanted to go.

It’s just not that fun having fun when you don’t want to have fun, Mom.

You see, Mom, each night insomnia sweeps me up in his arms dips me in the kitchen in the small glow of the stove-light.

Insomnia has this romantic way of making the moon feel like perfect company.

Mom says, “Try counting sheep.”

But my mind can only count reasons to stay awake;

So I go for walks; but my stuttering kneecaps clank like silver spoons held in strong arms with loose wrists.

They ring in my ears like clumsy church bells reminding me I am sleepwalking on an ocean of happiness I cannot baptize myself in.

Mom says, “Happy is a decision.”

But my happy is as hollow as a pin pricked egg.

My happy is a high fever that will break.

Mom says I am so good at making something out of nothing and then flat-out asks me if I am afraid of dying.

No. I am afraid of living.

Mom, I am lonely.

I think I learned that when Dad left how to turn the anger into lonely — The lonely into busy;

So when I tell you, “I’ve been super busy lately,” I mean I’ve been falling asleep watching Sports Center on the couch to avoid confronting the empty side of my bed.

But my depression always drags me back to my bed

Until my bones are the forgotten fossils of a skeleton sunken city,

My mouth a bone yard of teeth broken from biting down on themselves.

The hollow auditorium of my chest swoons with echoes of a heartbeat,

But I am a careless tourist here.

I will never truly know everywhere I have been.

Mom still doesn’t understand.

Mom! Can’t you see that neither can I?

 

This poem was groundbreaking for me. I think it was the first time I had read something so powerful that hit me like a freight train screaming this is me. The last line of the poem is what I have felt like I’ve been screaming unheard screams for years. People tend ask me a lot of questions trying to understand what is happening to me. It’s not as difficult for me now as it was at first. At first, while I was in a whirlwind of medical madness, it was like I had fallen down the rabbit hole and everyone was looking into the hole screaming at me for explanations of what was happening. But the hole was dark and I couldn’t see anything at all, I could see no explanations not even something right in front of my face. I couldn’t find the words in my head and string them together to tell anyone that I was more curious and confused than they were.

I spend a lot of time thinking and reflecting on things I have gone through and I think one of the big things I’ve learned is that we have no idea how we impact other people’s lives. The things we say and do may not mean much to one person but it could stay in the foreground of another person’s mind for most of their life. Words that don’t hurt someone may completely break another. I will never forget the stupid and insensitive things said to me about my depression and anxiety. In fact, there are some words and conversations I had years ago that I still think of often, though I wish I didn’t. Some words you choose to hang on to and others hang on to you.

 

I think there are make or break moments in life. There are times when we have the opportunity to build others up or tear them down, and I think a lot of the time when don’t realize it until it’s too late or maybe even at all.

 

When I hit 3 months of being in pain I was officially diagnosed with a chronic intractable migraine (meaning I had a migraine that wouldn’t go away). When my doctor sat me down and gave me what I refer to in my mind as the “chronic talk” he also told me he wanted me to see a psychologist. This doctor was my angel on earth so even when he told me he was concerned I was dealing with depression as a side effect of being in chronic pain, he didn’t upset me. It felt like he saved me, I just didn’t know what from yet. So he told me I would need to see the clinic’s psychologist each week to work on how to cope with pain. I honestly had no understanding of depression. I didn’t know what it truly meant, I couldn’t recognize it, and I definitely didn’t know it when i felt it. So when the only person left that I hadn’t completely shut out met me in one of those make or break moments and said the worst possible words I felt myself slip away. Those words chose to hang on me and the conversation plays on a loop in my head on my darker days.

 

 

 

There’s something about being told it’s all in your head that never leaves you. I know I’m not crazy now, but when you trust someone immensely and they tell you that it’s all in your head and you’re in your most vulnerable state what do you do? My world at that time was waking up and going to my doctor’s office almost everyday for IV infusions where I spent most of my time sedated in hopes I’d wake up in no pain. The only people I saw were my parents, my doctor, and the nurses. It took me hours to send a text to a person who I desperately wanted and needed to tell me it was going to be okay.

 

Words matter more than we could ever realize. They affect each person in a different way. It is beyond crucial to think before you use your words. Sometimes something that is funny to one is offensive to another. Sometimes something that flies past one’s ear sinks like quicksand into another. Remember God spoke the earth into motion with His words, they’re that impactful. He created us all individually so that we may not only be different, but feel differently as well. We all have pain and struggles, some may even look alike, but we do not feel pain the same way. I know now that I’ve been through a lot, that in those make or break moments it is good to lean on those around you, but it is imperative to lean on the Lord. While some words will always stick stronger than others, they hold no comparison to God’s words.

 

 

Colossians 4:6 “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”

Ephesians 4:29-32 “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

If you want to listen to the songs I was listening to when I wrote this click here.