I Am So Polite About My Sadness

Lost Pages from My Diary

Aug 20, 2024

Lately, my days go by in a fervor: I am constantly rushing forward whilst simultaneously dreaming up nostalgia. I miss the old days. I miss the old me. And the old me misses the older me. So on and so forth. I don’t know what I mean exactly when I say “I miss the old me” - I think it just as I think “I want to go home”, with no real rationale, just an instinctual, lifelong ache.

I want to go home is a phrase my mind is accustomed to latching onto, despite the fact that I have never had a place that was still enough to be home, no house that lasted long enough to earn the title. Where is it I want to go? I have never been able put my finger on it - the perfect scenario for home has continuously eluded me.

Sometimes, I get a taste of home; a bed shared with someone I love, whose smell I adore… sometimes I feel it when I see my wall of art as it comes together, slowly. A while back, it was the crook of my lovers neck, the curve of his shoulder that fit against mine so perfectly. Before that, it was my best friend’s car, the smell of his vape, the sound of his stupid laugh. Somedays, I come back to the apartment with my friends already there, leftovers put aside for me, and it fills me with warmth. I felt an inkling of home, in those moments, a seed that could be grown into something bigger, perhaps.

But it is never… exact. There is always a note missing. Have you ever craved a dish from childhood? You can imagine the taste… almost… like a ghost on your tongue. But it is never exact. And it will never be replicated.1

That ghost spoonful of a dormant dish haunts me, always. My tongue is always looking for it.

I miss the old me, I find myself thinking, when I get like this. In my depressive episodes sentences keep replaying in my mind - I become obsessive, whiny, annoying. I want to go home I miss the old me I’m going to get fired I need to pay rent. My friends hate me I hate myself I miss the old me. I wonder what he’s doing I wonder what she’s doing I want to go home I miss the old me would they like me better if I was the old me? I need to snap out of it I want to stop thinking I miss the old me. I want to go home everyone hates me. I miss the old me. Notably, I try to get the days moving faster. I’m too slow, I need to be quicker.

I suppose, sometimes, I rush forward thinking I’ll somehow get to the other side of it. Of this. That I will round the corner of time and end up wherever it is that I want to be so desperately…

Could it be my childhood home, where my mom painted the walls with a sponge, to make a sort of polka dot affect, that I’d like to go back to? Is it fresh orange juice in a plastic cup from a farm on some highway in Tampa, Florida, on my way to my grandparents house? Maybe it could be the floor of my kindergarten classroom, where I held hands in the dark with my first love during nap-time, after we hid popcorn kernels in our cubbies like they were lost treasure?

Maybe. Maybe.

writing to you from my self-imposed black hole,

The light has gone out again.

You’d think that I have perfected my routines by now, that I can successfully outrun the depression, but I always fall back into the gross tar of it, and succumb to the stickiness. Truthfully, this is the least familiar black hole I’ve ever been caught in. Which is why, I suppose, I’m writing about it. It’s mostly-new. Fresh. The sickness evolved into a strain better suited to combat my aged immune system.

Daily life has become a routine which I watch through a glass sheet - something that doesn't touch me, that keeps moving on its own.

(I’ve deleted and reposted due to something I wrote here, - I think it came off as though I was trying to compare two things... perhaps insensitive. After I posted, it just felt wrong to me. The quote simply struck me, I think of it often. But it’s best not to have it here at all.)

When I’m in periods like this, I look outside and I think, How is the fuck world still going? After everything? How is the world able to move on? After everything? My depressive episodes feel like mourning - now, at least, I know why I feel like I’m mourning, perhaps... the Palestinian blood in my veins is burning, hot and angry. I go to work everyday, still. I clean my bedroom every morning, still. How? Only God knows.

I am usually able to distract myself from the news. When I was thirteen, I remember ISIS as a looming threat at our borders. I learned to look away from the Real News, back then, to focus on good things, to keep my anxiety in check. I buried myself in video games, fanfic, TV shows and books, but back then, ISIS was a blurry thing - a faraway nightmare that wasn’t likely to come true. Fast forward to the present, and I can go to Dead Sea, as I do every summer, and stand - what? - only miles away from a genocide. I swim and laugh with my friends and eat. But the blood still burns, it still hurts, my soul still mourns.

There is a sort of intricate feeling of cowardice and shame that comes with watching people die on your screen. It is so much stronger, reader, when the roads look just like your own, when the faces of the dead look so similar to your aunts and uncles and cousins and lovers and friends. I sleep and dream of death. I deserve to. I am mostly-numb. Sorry, for now, I don’t think I can write more about Gaza in a way that is meaningful.

I do things right, these days, but I don’t get much out of them. I try to be politically correct about my depression, you know, and I do the typical stuff you’re supposed to do, like clean and walk and shower. I text my therapist, I talk to my friends, I wear my best moisturizer. But in this black hole of mine the little parts of life I used to enjoy become so unbearably unfulfilling. In times like these, I realize how useless advice can be. When my friends are down it’s so easy to get frustrated at them, to tell them to stop thinking or to clean their room or to take a shower; on the other side of this emotion, I begin to understand.

My daily routine: I wake up, a challenge in itself. I drink water. I get dressed. I bite into something, if I can. I drive. I sit. I pretend. I go home. I stand under the hot water of the shower. I face my reflection and think, My eye-bags are getting darker. I do nothing about them. I check my bank account. I try to read, then give up. I wear my best, silky lingerie to bed. I spray the bedsheets vanilla. I burn sage. When that doesn’t help, I finally realize somethings wrong. That I’m getting sick again.

I should combat this, I think. So, I do stupid things for attention - I throw in a joke here, a comment there, and hope someone will notice. I am casual and politically correct about it: I am sad about this, but it’s probably just because of the depression, I say. No one questions because I’m so good about it. I ask people for things and let them disappoint me. Hey, I need you - Sorry, I’m busy. I am hyperaware I am being sensitive. I am also hyperaware that I am depressed and that I must fix it. So I send another message, more emotional. I feel stupid for sending the message. I schedule a therapy session I can barely-afford. Yeah, that’s the best option.

I wait for my cry-in-a-bland-white-room appointment; I hold the tears in, I keep my speech brief. It is the most sensible decision, after all. It’s only good manners, of course.

“you’re so polite with your sadness. you don’t want to ruin this for anyone. you’re good at that.”

- Silas Melvin, from “Twenty,”

I would sit on my couch and watch the sun rise and fall from my window, if I could. I’d disappear into it like that one clip from MAID, if I could. But I can’t. I can’t, and that’s the worse part. There is rent, there is work, there is a life that must be lived, despite.

The truth? I will always be a girl waiting for a knight to save me. The knight doesn’t have to be a man - I’ll allow it to be a discovery, an awakening, a morning I rise and open the window and see in full color again. The knight can be a career or a viral post or a true friend, something that I experience that makes life worth living again. Something that will be like the right door finally opening - and the path before me becoming clear, defined, planned.

Anything - I will take anything.

Unfortunately it is difficult for me to end this here, where I kind of want to. I always say “the words end here”, though I often try to finish my work with a happy resolution, thanks to this image constantly burned into my brain as a wannabe-writer. Alas, the words end here, my love, though I do not believe that I will be stuck in this negativity forever. Life is big and, I pray, something worth holding onto.

Some other pieces that are more hopeful and positive: