The Weight Has a Name

It starts before you wake. Somehow it's already there— sitting on your chest like a guest who arrived while you were sleeping and doesn't plan to leave. You know this weight. It has a name you don't say out loud because saying it makes it real and you've been very good at pretending it isn't. Depression is not sadness. Sadness has a reason. Depression is the weather that happens inside a room with all the windows shut. People say: go outside. People say: exercise. People say: have you tried not feeling this way? People are very creative with their uselessness. The hardest part is not the darkness. The hardest part is the performance— the smile that takes four muscles and all your energy. The voice that says: I'm fine, while the rest of you is screaming in a frequency no one can hear. I'm not going to fix you with a poem. A poem is not medicine. A poem is someone in the next room knocking on the wall and saying: I'm here too. Does that help? Maybe. Maybe not. But the knocking is the point. You are not lazy. You are not broken. You are carrying something heavy with no handles and no one has taught you how to put it down. But you can. Slowly. With help. With time. With the radical act of believing that the version of you that exists on the other side of this is worth walking toward.