When The Applause Fades…
On Depression
The stage lights dim and the curtains fall,
the actors take a bow as the audience cheers loudly,
then the applause fades and silence descends as everyone leaves,
the rhythm of their shuffling feet pinging off the walls of her mind.
Iganya* is alone once again.
Yesterday, she was curled up on the bathroom floor,
bone-tired and unable to move,
her stomach in knots and her legs as heavy as lead.
Today, she is lying in bed and staring at the ceiling,
mind as blank as a new Word document.
Mild, they called it but this thing is a wild beast.
Like desert winds, it sweeps in unannounced,
wilfully stays its course and leaves a dark cloud in its wake.
She lives in fear of someone lurking in the shadows,
waiting for the right time to swoop in and expose her.
Sometimes, she even wonders how it would be to cease to exist.
Like a thirsty traveler at an oasis, she catches a break,
and there is a semblance of normalcy. All seems well.
In those moments, she is on top of the world,
but that feeling wears off abruptly,
the full-stop becomes a comma and she is small again.
Life is not black-and-white,
and why it is unfair to some, no one will ever know.
You can’t fix what you can’t see, they say.
She wants to do better, be better
but she worries that pushing too hard makes things snap.
She does not know how the coming days would find her
but try, she will, with the hope that showing up counts for something.
Perhaps, it is a prayer for a whisper of a fighting chance.
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