[poem] Denial

Sometimes one feels poorly.
​For days, then weeks, then months.

The torture is littered with little reprieves; sunny afternoons; days when hope, productivity and distant measures of self-worth come flooding back and convince one that their sorrows, already blurring in memory, were just fleeting artefacts from some undiscovered but insignificant hiccup in lifestyle. Maybe one wasn't eating properly. Ho hum, more fruit to come. Maybe the neighbour's fridge was vibrating the bedroom wall in just the right way to foster bad dreams and feelings of dread. Thankfully their latest renovation has moved the fridge away, so today's morning feels a little more like one remembers it ought to. Feet first out of bed, and to the shower, with no lying on the floor. Or maybe the troubling feelings had come from work. Some small dissatisfaction snowballed into a great lethargy because insufficient effort was made to separate work and life. Did one merely burn out? Oh well, today's work is more enjoyed, so work hygiene is a precaution for next time. Maybe instead it was a lover; a whisper in the ear, which despite all the hugs and reassurances, couldn't outweigh what must have been an unconscious but ever growing discontentment. Had the relationship always been parasitic? No matter, they've been pushed away now, scorned for their perniciousness, and this morning's cloudless sky has convinced one it was the right thing to do. Perhaps instead a lover was missing. Recent affairs were fickle and fleeting, and the loneliness had bubbled over, spilled into daily routines and doused the ego. But a new pixelated face has sparked fresh optimism. One could never lie in bed all day with such inspiring beauty at peril. And they like all of one's favourite bands!

But parry to protest, one is suddenly thrust back. Into the bare, the blank, the black. Toppling down the cliff face, plunging unto the depths. Somersaulting clumsily in cause unclear as all before. Had one been struck by something sinister and stealthy, lain awaiting by the edge? Or were it plain to spot as it barrelled onward cliffside, if not for the waning delirium of its previous sting? Why had one even strayed so close to the precipice? Woe, maybe one pulled themselves down in self-sabotage, destined by an inscrutable ballet of genes and neurotransmitters, orchestrated by a crescendoing cacophony of pirouetting molecules whose one in a trillion had heavy-footedly damned the ensemble to a spiralling disarray and a panting heap of tripped feet. One can't know; the black box never budges.

So one stares helplessly to the rushing sea. Prepares to cry through waterlogged lungs. And whether by the currents on the seabed, or the splashes on the shower floor, one is extinguished. Silent and still. Lips askew with head, heavy, unblinking. Though embers flicker when the flames lick; Gears whir when the coin drops; Cheeks drawn smiling and frame propped when friends animate; Alas when the pull string settles, one lies still and quiet. Sluggish thoughts beg the knees to press and the elbows to straighten. Still, still. Until next struck, the TV is static. The shaded leaf wilts and the root withers. Something is festering on the sea floor. The frets chip as the strings wane and mute. The limbs droop limply. The wheel slows and stops.

From that vantage, one cannot feel very well at all. But newer days roll in somehow, and new air with them. And just as suddenly, one feels fine coasting their slopes, wind in hair and a familiar shrug upon the brow. A quiet comfort has replaced that which was numb, and polished boots; the hulking, dark stain at the bedside. How did one permit such a slump? Surely streaks of lowly spirits are as natural as a short spell of cold, or a Sunday under the weather. The missing mornings and swollen nights seem all accounted now in a bout of reckless but incidental indifference to sleep schedule. Understandable, if one isn't properly stimulated. After all, one's duties flittered like their appetite. In fact, hadn't some progress been made notwithstanding; an assuredly impossible effort while crawling beneath the crushing press of a great, melancholic beast bearing down upon the back? Then the affliction couldn't be so great; couldn't be more than a brief strain on the shoulders, unworthy of the faintest alarm, unneeding of cold labels and prescriptions, and overturned at the lightest push. Indeed, through today's clear lens, one can confidently dismiss yesterday's torments, already half buried. How foolish to have let a poor mood spill into the recesses of one's mind, one's ego, and one's floor. How near-sighted to let a fanciful whim extrapolate beyond the measure of one's evening temper, to the space of patterns and trends, into the world of muffled moans and sprawling letters. How embarrassing to have tugged at the hair and starved the mouth. To have begged the pen and torn the canvas. To have teased the bottle and tempted the river.

There's little to learn lingering on all that now. It too has passed. And soon enough, erased. With the floor swept and the curtains drawn, the looking glass is ready to smile back. So one ties their laces all the way, fastens their topmost button, and assumes all the stage positions where one hopes friends still expect to find them. No thought spared for what was missed; what was atrophied; what was lost. Nor what could be described with long, unfeeling, scientific words. It is enough to have reached the spotlight, smiling convincingly. The smile is carried even into the wings. Sometimes passed the sightlines, and sometimes further.

Sometimes one is convinced they feel okay.
For days, then weeks, then months.