My Depression Is Funny Like That Poem by Scott Sims

This week I sat in an auto zone parking lot and cried for ten minutes because I couldn't change a headlight, which sounds like a lead up to a terrible stand-up routine, right? One where the joke is always on me? Like, haha, I ate half a bag of pretzel m&ms at 11: 30 in the morning
IN BED.

When My headlight went out, my first thought was "Seems right."
I couldn't change it myself because I'd have to take off the whole bumper or something,
And I thought,
"Of course" or,
"I wish I was dead."
My brain is dramatic like that.

There are some days I am so sad I don't remember what it's like not to be depressed,
Like when you have a bad cold
and you forget how to breathe through your nose and you're so sure you'll never breathe through your nose again
And I'm so sure I'll never feel joy again.
Except when you have a cold you can call in sick to work,
And people tell you to get well soon,
And there is a whole soup genre dedicated your well-being.
But I can't call in "sad" to work.

So sometimes all I can do is laugh,
If I don't, there might be nothing left.
There's a crack in my bathtub in the shape of the Platte River,
I know this because I sit on the floor of my shower
so often it's become a permanent imprint in my thigh.
And I sit here because I've been sad since graduation,
Or maybe I have a bad cold,
Or maybe it's both,
But the cold makes the most sense for sympathy purposes.

I need to get out of the house,
I need to be a person again.
to put on clothes,
To eat a bowl of cereal
To Take care of this terrible body that refuses to take care of me back.
I'm so tired of talking about my depression as someone else,
As A ghost that haunts me
and I am afraid of the seance,
Afraid of what it might want from me.

My depression is funny like that
Because doesn't ask for much
but when it does
it is something I cannot give
and that's the joke,