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What Happens After You Get Help
Depression isn’t a three-act play with a fixed ending
“But suicides have a special language. Like carpenters, they want to know which tools. They never ask why build.”
–Anne Sexton
You never say the words; you write them. You repeat them to yourself like a song you can’t seem to shake, the lyrics of which you can’t remember. Maybe you can sing your way back to fine until you realize this is yet another promise you’ve made to yourself that you probably won’t keep. Over here stands your Babel tower of wants — the ground quaking beneath. Cracks in the fault. Over there lie the notes some of us leave behind; we write about the why but rarely the what. Because the cold, quiet body is the what, and who wants to be redundant?
We leave our clues. The how are the tools we use. The where is the place we feel safest, home. Coroners can tell you the when. They have their tools and measurements, too.
But you never say the words out loud, because they’re a clarion call for the swarm. They swan in with 1-(800) numbers to call: copy, paste, and retweet. They tell you that you are worthy and loved. They say, “You’ll live through this,” and you can’t help but laugh over the irony of the…
