The Art of Maintaining or Criss-Cross Applesauce With My Depression

Sit with it. On the floor, Indian style, no I mean criss-cross applesauce. But in my mind it will forever be Indian style when I’m alone with just the rug. Because that’s the voice that chirps in playback in the nickelodeon of my memories.

Sit on the rug. Now you know why you are here. To face your toughest critic, your biggest enemy, your all time High Rain Coat Needing Depression! It won’t come out all at once, though. It wont even come out a little, at first. You’ll have to coax it out. You’ll have to prod it, compliment it, cajole, tickle, yell, and read to it. Then ignore it with the television. Do some laundry and eat some food. Just go about your normal day.

In the afternoon, it will peek out at you from the bedroom, but you won’t see it. You’ll just think you’re tired. That night, it’ll come into the living room with you to watch a movie. But you won’t notice because you’ll be looking at your phone almost the whole time. Its the only time you really get to yourself, after all.

When you go to sleep that night, depression will be in the bathroom hogging your toothbrush. They might wake you a few times that night, but they always let you go back to sleep. They just need some water like Cindy Lou Who from the Grinch.

The next morning, you’ll think Depression has left when you don’t see them on the couch, and for the next few days, you think you are home alone. But then, suddenly, without warning, you feel their presence. They have now decided it is time to chat. You’ll be busy watching a movie or chatting with your mom. But you’ll get annoyed and you’ll snap at the phone, or turn the channel because you hate the character’s poor choices. That night, you wont sleep well at all. It’ll feel like you had way too much caffeine.

The next morning, you will only want coffee, and a lot of it, and you’ll barely be able to eat lunch. In the afternoon you’ll crave more coffee and be angry, so you probably won’t eat again until that night when you consume cheese pizza because it’s literally the only thing you aren’t mad at.

You won’t know it or know how, but your house guest Depression is doing this to you.For days, they’ll take up your space, invisible but monstrous. You’ll be cranky and sad…