For crying a lot, I don't have a lot of tears.
But when they slip out of my right eye and over the bridge of my nose and drip silently onto the organic bamboo sheets covering the mattress my left cheek is pressed to, the water trail they leave is cool and almost refreshing in a bedroom that feels stifling and stuffy and hot.
It is not naturally cool where I live and the lack of insulation leaves my house always a little too warm, and despite that I lay on my bed covered only in that same soft bamboo sheet, my uncomfortable body feels over-heated and tired.
So the tear feels cool and refreshing. The only hopeful feeling my body has received in a while.
I shouldn't be tired. I slept until 11 today after going to bed at 11 last night. And then again, this afternoon, after my duties were done, I laid down in bed until I had to get up again. And after the final early evening activities were complete, I returned to the fitted bamboo sheet covering the almost nine year old mattress even though it wasn't even eight o'clock.
Because I'm depressed. Obviously. Depression is an old friend I know well. I say friend because as friends are so wont to go nowadays, depression seems to be the only one who keeps coming back.
I wonder if it is me.
Two friends got married tonight. Two people I introduced to each other. However, last year they decided my friendship wasn't worth it, but never told me this until after months of silence when I asked what was up, they admitted their conviction. I didn't go to their wedding because I wasn't invited, because I wasn't wanted. This is only the third friendship issue I've ever really had. People fall in and out of your life, but this is only the third friendship altercation I've experienced. The first was with a women everyone agreed was bat shit crazy, and she dropped everyone else like a bad habit too, so I felt kind of grateful when she was gone. The second incident with a beloved friend of mine resolved itself after some time and space. But this third one went on unbeknownst to me until so much time had passed that when I finally found out what happened, I felt embarrassment and more hurt than I ever would have felt had we talked about the issue at the time.
Adding to their wedded bliss this 30th day of June, is my roommate who got engaged tonight, finally, after months of complaining about her boyfriend and begging him to ask her already. She's ten years younger than I, and so I realize she doesn't know to just let time pass and be grateful for life as it comes in its own readiness, but still, her engagement makes me think of the man who asked me to marry him when I was her age. And the ring that was given to me by another just two years later; and it made me think of one of my best friends, a boy I loved, who asked a woman to marry him last week, a woman who isn't me.
And I guess it's just too much happiness. I can't even get my current boyfriend to return my texts or phone calls. Nothing. Just silence. The first man I loved in five years, the first man to love me back since that guy with the ring, and yet, I've never been more unhappy.
So I lay on my bed and cry. Not big tears, just slow, silent, wet ones that cool my face just enough to grant me brief relief from my friend depression who lays on top of me, unwelcome and unrelenting.
And then I realize it's not them. It's me. All the failed relationships over the years... if I'm the one who ended up single, then it's me who has the problem. The common denominator in fifteen years of adult dating is me.
Me.
Like the friends who left because of me, so the men leave because it's me. It isn't them. It's me. And depression lets himself back in the house because it's me who will leave the door unlocked. It's me who has the problem.
I don't really believe this in my heart of hearts. Really I believe a boy should call his girlfriend on the phone, or at least pretend she exists. And he shouldn't smoke pot three times a day, or have anger management issues, or still be in love with his ex-fiance. In my heart of hearts, I know these men weren't good for me.
But what I understand tonight is that I probably wasn't good for them either. Or any of the rest of the men who have wandered in and out of my life. So when men don't call back for a second date or dump me after two weeks or fill in the blank, it's not them, it's me.
And maybe that job that everyone coveted at that organization that everyone wanted to be a part of, wasn't as oppressive or exhausting or ridiculous as I thought it was. Maybe I was the problem there too. Like the suffocating relationships, I thought I had to get out. So I did.
But the common denominator there again was me.
I'm the problem. And depression has come to reveal this to me. But in this illumination, he has turned off a light. And another ray of hope is gone. In the revelation comes the closing of the drapes. They say it should be another way, that with enlightenment comes freedom, light, weightlessness. But they're wrong. Recognition only gives way to deeper solitude, darker souls, deadlier depravity.
So while the tears are a nice respite, they will not free me from my friend. They will only usher in the night. And again, I go to sleep.
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