Last week I felt terribly depressed. It was a heaviness that wrapped me all up in it. I couldn’t sleep well into the night, and when I finally did I was so exhausted that I would sleep through the whole next day. There is often a deep emptiness that hollows me out right after my period. I have many theories about this. Something about the nihilism of the endless cycle, the proverbial snake eating itself. Most months it would threaten to over take me, then pass swiftly by. I would hardly remember it days later, but for one reason or another, this week, I was taken under by it.
I wrote this a while back about such a moment. Perhaps, this is as good a time as any to introduce a new location. Of course this location is not in space, but in time.
The drop off-point
Fuck, back here again. You know, I’m starting to realize a pattern. I thought I would meet this void during that time when all the blood was shedding its way out of my uterus. I feel really holy then. Really wise. I want to give so much advice. I want people to come sit by my bed and I will tell them exactly what to do. Then, I’ll tell them to leave me alone. But that isn’t that time.
No, here is that moment right after all the blood is gone. When you are completely empty, fresh like a baby re-entering the world again. That is when I contemplate ending it the most.
I find myself here, deep down in that space where the first murmurs are being uttered. Where a tree is given four letters to contain its entire essence, and god I swear I have never been more fucking exhausted.
There is a mirror down here, just me and a mirror, and it is like I am eight again. I am staring at my face and my body, and I am repeating to myself like an incantation. That is me. That is me. That is me.
Or, it is like late at night when I speak my name out loud into the darkness and it is like someone else. They are summoning me and for a moment I get scared of that voice, of those syllabus, of how other they are.
I become strange, a stranger.
And here I am, back at the start. And my fallopian tubes wait for another egg to make its passage and here I am doing it all over again and all I want to do is groan.
And I try. I open my mouth wide, real wide, but before I have the chance to do so. The whole wide world comes rushing right out.
Throughout all of the muck, a new little being had entered my life. A little cat named Luna. I was joking with my love about how I felt like I went through postpartum depression with her. It felt funny and silly to talk about in the light, but down there in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep and her little body pressing next to me brought an onslaught of sickening anxiety about accidentally crushing her if I rolled over, it felt less than funny. I wouldn’t be able to stop crying into my pillow, and all I could think about was the crushing dread that she was absorbing all of these bad scary feelings. To care for another being felt like the most unbearable task at that moment. How could I sustain and care for a life when I felt such a lingering disgust about the world? When I could feel in my bones the totality of human suffering protracted across time? When all I could think about was bodies and bombs?
I awoke my partner in the middle of the night. I couldn’t sleep and I was feeling scared. They talked me down from the ledge and together we fumbled for our jackets and gloves in the dark and walked around the block. There in the middle of the night it was just us and the vast snow removal infrastructure of Montreal. It felt comforting to know that while I was sleeping trucks piled up with snow were driving away. The air was fresh and cold. All I knew about was sensation and skin. I had this feeling come over me that there was love all around. Time wasn’t closing in on me as it was just a moment before, it was opening up wide. I felt that if we were forever circling around my block, just me, my lover and the Montreal snow removal trucks it could all be okay. There was enough love radiating in that moment to heal many things. We went back home. I finally fell asleep.
Right now, I am totally and utterly submitting myself to winter. I let go of the whole day at 4PM if that is what my body calls of me. I read my library books, I watch my tv shows, I eat clementines, I write, and I light candles when I remember to. I have spent many winters lamenting that it wasn’t summer, but now I know better to let winter be exactly as it is. I might even tentatively say that I love it. Okay, it is still early days, talk to me in February and maybe by then I will be itching to throw the whole heavy coat off of me.
I swtg this newsletter is better than therapy. Writing is better than therapy! I feel lighter just writing one true sentence after another. If there is anything I can promise you it is my honesty.
Thank you for your time. I am wishing you many candle lit dinners, till next time.
-Thai & Luna xx