Trigger Warning: Suicide and graphic imagery
Dear Depression,
You have dwelled within me for the last 5 years. You must by now, believe that you know me better than I know myself. Perhaps you do.
You are the living thing within me that forces me to battle darkness. Not just battle darkness but to operate within its pressured confines.
I no longer own myself; you know you own a part of me, a part that wants out; a part that venomously consumed me when I lost my mother at 17 and continues to do so. A part that wants to see my body hung and soul drowned. A part that yearns to see night consume day and itches to see hopelessness and fear dominate hope.
At your best, you disable, patronize and mock me privately and publicly. You eat me up slowly whilst I painfully lie awake, willing death in a psychiatric unit. You have seen me choke and bleed – pleading for death.
Yet, you are the very thing that best exposes light, the bright and alluring force that illuminates darkness and offers faith and the chance of something more – a thing called life.
Have you ever seen light blossom in darkness, I wonder? Have you ever seen darkness transform into a thousand shadows?
You needn’t remind me that you own my soul, that you’re going nowhere or that you know me better than I know myself. However, you need know that you’re only a part of me – a part of my story.
Mary Oliver once asked: ‘Listen – are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?’
I am and probably will continue to do so for some time. But every single time I breathe ‘just a little’, I hope it invites some light – light that in turn offers me the gift of harvesting an abundant and mature crop.
A crop that was worth battling , waiting and living for.
Yours Truly,
Malan Wilkinson
MyBlue.Blog 