When I was in college, I struggled a bit with mild depression or melancholy. During those times, I found refuge in music, long walks, and poetry. This is a poem that I wrote during that season and just found the other day. It tries to articulate that sense of strangeness or eeriness that can come with depression—that feeling like everything in the world is a bit off color, or blurry like when you have the wrong prescription glasses. Sometimes just getting to the point where you can articulate that feeling can bring a measure of comfort.
A hidden stillness
Like pain under an opiate
A shadow lurking
Like a centipede crawling in my mind
A strangled feeling, tortured in time, suspended in mid-air, churning beneath consciousness
A gnawing greyness
Like splintered glass in dark water
A grasping hope, a rising light
A certain knowledge
This, too, shall pass
3 Responses
That is beautiful and describes the feeling so accurately