Soledad Rodriguez

Soledad Rodriguez Poems

The Best Poem Of Soledad Rodriguez

Depression Is Funny Like That By Reagan Myers

This week I sat in an auto zone parking lot and cried for ten minutes because I couldn't change a head light, 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 or, I watched the pilot of Gossip Girl ten times in the past two weeks because I keep falling asleep half way through because being sad is a goddamn joke sometimes.

My headlight went out and 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."Being this kind of sad is funny that way, no inconvenience is a minor inconvenience, it's all the end of the world or might as well be, my brain is dramatic like that.

Depression is a silent film, a monologue shot underwater, depression is sulking because I won't talk to it anymore, by which I mean ABOUT it. There are some days I am so sad I don't remember what it's like not to be, 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.I can't call in "sad" to work. I can't go to the grocery store and go to the "sad aisle" which would have like already stale popcorn and tea which your best friend swears is good for you.

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 Platt river, and I know this because I sit on the floor of my shower so often it's become a permanent imprint in my thigh.

I'm here because I've been sad since graduation, not this one the one before that, or maybe I have a bad cold, or maybe it's both, but the cold makes the most sense for sympathy purposes.

If I get out, I have to be a person again. Have to put on clothes, put lotion on my legs, eat a bowl of cereal at least, 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, a ghost that haunts me and I am afraid of the seance, afraid of what it might want from me.

My depression doesn't ask for much but when it does it is something I cannot give and that's the joke, it's just me asking for something I cannot give.I ask to come back to my body and it's only me saying no.

When people ask me how I am they might as well be asking me where I've gone. I"m driving down a dirt road, no headlights, when it curves I will not know, just drive on into the field my own voice playing on the radio telling me "there is no place for me here."

Soledad Rodriguez Comments