When Therapy Ain't Enuff...

When you’re feeling distant from yourself

When it’s hard to even rise out of bed

For the girls who cry themselves to sleep, too many nights to count on their hands…

I reach into my back pocket and try to pull out a stack of rituals for myself. The one’s I save for a rainy day. The ones that are the invisible string that pulls me out the bed in the morning when I am too depressed to get through a simple morning routine.

The thread, a constellation of stars, the ones who came before me. I imagine that a group of women who are my ancestors, huddle around me so I can feel their love. All of it, sucking me in. There are days, when even that isn’t enough.

There are weeks that my toes go unpolished, I go makeup less, and a matted bush of barely moisturized coiled hair sits on top of my head.

These are the days I must figure out what inspires me to live. What small thing(s) can get me out of the door and to work in the morning. What is dear enough to me to hold onto.

Four weeks go by of stacked up mail. A routine of ignoring the things I need to face, open, complete.

I go out, grab drinks, sit and sift through happy hours. I smile and try not to complain, pretend that things are fantastic and normal enough. Nobody really has answers or responds when you say, “I’m depressed.” We haven’t been taught how to hold a space for people in that way.

I come home, light some candles, throw a bath bomb in the tub, my favorite one that I’ve been saving. I turn on that one song by Lianne La Havas. I sink into the water barely grateful that I lived to see another day.

Sometimes it hurts just to get out of bed.

+Rukiya