Confession

Today,
you asked a question
I have not contemplated
for years.

Did I think my depression was glamourous?
Initially? Certainly,
when you don't care if you live or die
and you are at a party
with friends and acquaintances
getting too drunk on cheap vodka from cheap flasks
and smoking spliffs in darkened back-yards
it is easy to romanticise the sadness,
to compare it to your favourite tv character.

But after a few months,
I hated it.
Because most of the time
I wasn't dolled up and misunderstood
most of the time I was pathetic and miserable.

I was trying to understand how and why
I had ever been happy.
I was embarrassed that I felt this way for no good reason.
And I was afraid that I was going to feel this way forever.
I spent two years trying and failing to remember the person I was
and wondering if i would always be this way.
Most of the time,
I was fucking terrified
and hopeless
and exhausted
and anxious
and just very, very sad.

This is my best explanation.