I don’t understand people who aren’t suicidally depressed by reality.
What am I seeing that they’re not?
How are some people able to function as if everything is just hunky-dory
while I have to hold an existential debate
about how fine my coffee grounds are?
Why does it seem some people climb from strength to strength
while I struggle to roll out of bed—
even though I roll out of bed at absurdly earlier and earlier and earlier times every day,
almost to the point where it seems I don’t sleep at all?
What are people missing that I am subjecting myself to?
How is it that people aren’t wrapped up in the great conspiracy of life,
this pause between being unborn and being dead?
They simply pretend to be afraid—
with their Band-Aids and their aspirin,
their long, thoughtful walks,
their scented candles burning to wave off the bad spirits.
Sometimes I feel like I am the bad spirit,
haunting my own room, dwelling where I dwell.
Maybe my bad spirit is the thing waking me up in the morning.
Maybe my bad spirit is the thing covering my eyes
so I don’t see the other reality, the simple reality:
the reality that’s just sunshine or rainy days,
moonlit skies or dark, starless nights.
I wish there were a way to listen to the wind rushing through the trees
and not wonder if I need to take down the hanging plants from my balcony.
I wish my cats would tell me their secret.
But how? They can’t speak—
and even if they could, they’re only awake two hours a day,
and most of those 120 minutes are spent
begging me for little bits of my chicken.
I don’t know.
Maybe there’s something I’m missing.