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Counting Staples

Depression is such an overplayed word these days.

By Hayley MattoPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
1
The Pole

The faces are laughing at me from the print on the living room sofa. Not real faces, of course. Just the ugly, used floral print picked up off the side of the road. If you zone out on the design, like I often do, you’ll begin to see the shapes take on the form of whimsical creatures that one might find in Alice’s wonderland. They laugh at me as I stare blankly, wide-eyed.

It slowly becomes apparent that the laughter is in fact not leaking from the sofa’s permanently-pressed-in asscheek-deflated dimples, or the mocking, ugly flower faces, but the space all around me. These strangers, supposed roommates, are flooding my nervous system with their laughter-- making me feel like each exhale from a laugh is controlling my inner gasp for air. My chest grows tighter and tighter, like it's their job to control the air in the room and use it all for their laughter. Selfish. Or happy fools. I haven’t decided yet.

The nicest of the strangers collapses next to me on the ugly sofa and asks, “What's wrong?”

I hear the words but there is too much to know. Too much already known, and not enough air left in the space to waste on explaining… I shrug.

“Well that's not an answer.”

I wonder what she would do if she only knew what I was thinking.

“What’re you thinking?”

She does wonder.

It’s sweet of her to try to interrupt and understand my biweekly breakdown. However, there is not enough air left in this room for me to even begin to explain the debt I am accruing. Debt I didn’t begin this journey of self identification with. Debt that I will be digging myself out of for the rest of my days, so it seems. Or at least the days that matter. As if I get to dictate what days are worthy of mattering-- maybe I’m the fool. Meanwhile, growing an internal spiritual debt with myself for being at an absolute loss with who I am as a twenty year old, supposed to be full of life and ambition ADULT. Let alone who I am as a human. Identity is hard.

Instead I choke out, “My chest is growing tighter, but it doesn't matter why, or to think about it too much, for that will only make it grow tighter faster.”

A panic attack begins creeping up my throat- or maybe it’s just acid reflux from all the cheap booze I guilted the cute neighbor boy to buy for me. Either way, the words of my therapist I see once a week and pay with an overcharged credit card sneak into my mind: maybe it’s time to try the anti-depressants.

She softens. Not to empathize. But as if she feels like she's regained control of the living room through her assumed understanding of my issue.

“That's true.” She agrees.

I’m annoyed, but it’ll pass for tired. Sensing this conversation is going nowhere fast, I scoop myself up from the ugly sofa and bundle a half drank bottle of booze, some off-brand gatorade for a chaser, and a shareable size packet of peanut M&Ms, (A.K.A. dinner for the broke and depressed), and scuffle to my room. I’m lucky enough to have a lock on my door, giving me some false sense of separation from the strangers I’ve subjected myself to living with. Tarped away in my nest of a bed now, the laughter continues. Louder and louder, matching the same annoying electric buzz this house holds.

I manage to sit up in my nest to open a window and think, you're welcome. The sounds of outside begin to drown out the laughter, and provide a little air for all the air being taken by faces printed on our living room sofa. You fools would suffocate from your gluttonous intake. If it weren't for my window left ever so slightly ajar, we’d all suffocate in your need for dominance. Or maybe it's all just a way to mask insecurity, a fight for dominance in wanting to be approved of, sucking up all the available air in the space to use in their laughter battle cry. Little do they know a bunch of noise concocted in a single space becomes a single loud noise, like a crowd chanting in unison, even different phrases, is still just a single crowd. Louder than the threat, than the feeling in this house that could cut through silence like a knife through butter. Louder than the tension building, making my chest tighter. Silence is a killer that will get away with murder in a crowded room.

So I sleep with my window open. Tuning out the pulsating walls, the individual sounds attempting to spark the crowd, to orchestrate the noise pollution parade. Tuning out the laughing faces printed on our living room sofa. Restoring some air into this house. Expanding my chest. And no, not thinking about what could make it tighter tomorrow. Because we all know what tomorrow brings. Another day at my underpaying job, in another stuffy space full of strangers I call coworkers. Then to decide if it's worth using my tips to buy dinner, or if I’m depressed suppressed enough to not really have an appetite. Depression is such an overplayed word these days.

It gives people like She the false idea that just because they see a friend on the couch trying to drink away their anxieties, it's just depression to blame; that they have been there too and therefore know how to fix your version of depression. I'm sorry to break it to these people like She, but unfortunately no, you just have a saving the day Hero complex that is pretty common in the human species. I believe Google would classify that about 1 in 3 humans carry this unfortunate falsehood creating complex.

Depression is an entity, but it’s not so black and white for people. It doesn’t exisit to affect us all equally like some sort of STD or Flu. Meaning there isn’t a thermometer or skin rash that can help identify that you do in fact hold depression as the leading cause to your current discomfort. Depression is more like a Cancer, a crippling sometimes more physically apparent in some and completely invisible in others, disease. That just like Cancer has no one true ‘cause’. Therefore the She in my life, and for all the other 1 in 3 people with the Hero complex, you can’t fix this. You probably can’t even honestly pin point where it came from, and how it attacks an individual. But it’s sweet of you to try.

The next day comes, I wake to the rain outside thankfully and not the laughter I had to drown out last night. I can breath better, but never great. I listen through my cage door to hear if any of the others occupying this space are lively yet. I don’t care to engage in small talk, goodness knows I will be doing that more than enough at work. With the confirmation of no sounds from past my door, I presume it's safe to exist and begin my rituals to get through yet another day. I slip into the bathroom, where I decide my hair is passible to not be washed yet again and spritz essentially canned air onto my roots and call it a rough shampoo. I put on my clothes, only to double back into something I’ve already worn three times this week. My brain is telling me I look unshapely in the first pick. Let's not give ourselves something more to be insecure about.

Feeling exhausted from merely starting my day I find myself in the kitchen. A debate begins in my head staring into the cupboard if I want deserve a granola bar to start my morning. I opt for just a cup of coffee, black since apparently my creamer curdled. Funny how little things can feel like such big things when you’re as fragile as I feel I have become. Maybe I should book my appointment after all with my professional Hero Complex depression fighter and add another unpayable charge to my credit.

Walking out to my car, I find a tire I have let deflate slowly over time, out of being unable to afford a new one, has fully exhaled it’s last breath sometime over the night. I feel oddly jealous of the tire, it expelled its pressure, I’m still holding mine. Walking to work it is. It’s not a particularly long walk and I justify that expending calories is just what I need anyway.

Numbing out to the world, I formulate a weighted list in my head. Starting with my financial debts and bills, and then on the other end of the list I mentally tally all the ways I have disappointed myself since seeking out a journey of self discovery. I feel the tightness begin to return in my chest. I finish off my coffee, that way when my heart begins to palpitate and flutter I can blame the caffeine instead of my anxiety. It’s at this moment I reach an intersection that allows me to pick my route to work. I focus on that and joke to myself that this morning can feel like a pick your own adventure book instead of a drizzly downer filled with overthinking and a broken down car. Left. I’d like to say it’s a new route, or my “road less traveled”, maybe prettier scenery, but that would be false. It’s simply the route I know has the large wooden street pole, with wires running off the top shelling out power to all the small businesses downtown. It’s directly across from Smith’s Record store and always covered in money making opportunities. You know the ones, you pull a tab of paper or call the number on the flyer and hope it’s not a scammer or a creep waiting to kidnap you or rob you for all the money you don’t have. I wanted to check out that pole and see if there were any potentially profitable options just waiting for me to find.

After a few blocks of walking, and some more reminders to stop getting so introspective and simply blame the retrograde for all my issues, I reach the pole. I’m disappointed to find it’s barren of all job opportunities and instead in its nakedness exposing all of the rusty old staples that have been used to hold up countless job offers, band member seeking calls, and advertisements. I take a moment to count as many staples as I can, a little enamoured by the sheer amount of them, paying tribute to community outreach or maybe just how old this pole is. After a few times of losing track if I was on staple seventy-four or eighty-four, I decided to walk on, besides if I was late one more time I was supposedly getting a write up. But as I step away from the pole I trip, it looks like I had missed something propped up against the base of the pole. Too busy counting staples. I laugh to myself and pick up a trash bag wrapped black tiny leather bound book. I pocket it, and decide I’ll read it after work.

If you’re reading this, it’s your lucky day. I don’t know where you have found me but let's just say it’s fate or maybe it’s luck. Whatever faith you chose to believe in or not. The name of the person who created this doesn’t matter, what does is their intention in doing so. Inside this book is the memoir of someone who learned how to let go of societies expectations and live life different, following this books lessons I have managed to ditch the life I hated being the main character of, and found fortune in not just ridding myself of all expenses but also a life I feel fortunate to be living.

depression
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About the Creator

Hayley Matto

Just a 26yr old processing the 🌎 one sh*tty poem at a time. Need human connection or just killing time?

Read some thoughts by She.

-P.S. that’s me.

Insta: @thoughts.by.she 🖤 Thanks for tuning in! Much Love.

Shout Out to ViM 🤍 Love 'em.

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