i wonder what i’d be like
free
from the depression
that so often
buries me
[would i even recognize
in a mirror
the person i’d see?]
turning depression into art
January 31, 2026
two panic attacks
[or something like them]
in one month
after years of fair avoidance
i cannot tell if something is
going on
inside me
or if it simply the strain
of the external forces
of the world i cannot control
[but still affects us all]
or maybe
maybe
it’s the strain of january
of winter
when i can never see the light of spring
at the end of the proverbial
tunnel
just give me one crocus blossom
one sprig of green
not these mountains of slush-snow
and lows below zero overnight
i need something
something
something to keep me going
this has been the longest january i’ve seen
since wisconsin
October 5, 2025
i got
a sudden sad
yesterday
appearing out of
[seemingly]
nowhere, bubbling up to my eyes
hot with unexpected tears
all of a sudden
filling
overflowing
dripping down my
sad sad face
as i searched for something
to take the pain even slightly
away
and my kip was there to hold me
[the only thing that ever truly helps]
and jiggle/wiggle me around
to make me laugh some of the tears away
and the puppy was there to nuzzle into my face
and dry up the dripped tears with her fur
and the cat was there
to confuse my sadness away
when she tried to lick the inside of my
recently emptied coffee mug
but later
kip was on the couch
slowly melting to prone
as the weight of the news
read from the phone
crushed them down
gravity invading their bones
until they couldn’t move anymore
and i had used up all my personal stock of
any sort of ‘light at the end of the
fascist
tunnel’ feeling to wipe my eyes
and continue the laundry that needed
to be done,
so i couldn’t be there for my kip
as they had just been there for me
experiencing the same sadness
i had just
felt
this is a horrible timeline
why can’t people
[in power]
just
be
kind?
September 25, 2025
what is this
existential nihilism that gossip gives me?
like the minute i’m not
part of the story
and instead invested in the lives of others
my own becomes ghosted
to the point of fading
out from the prime material plane
what use is my spirit
if the flame of my life
heats no one else’s hands?
[these are some silly metaphors
and even sillier phrasing for
a moment today when i experienced
true surprise at my own dealing]
August 30, 2025
i feel at odds
with my own creativity
with my own wants and needs
with my own life as i’m living it
amongst people
everything feels so fallible
so ephemeral
and i suppose it all is
it’s just, there might be some time
before all the skills and abilities
and friends and life
leaves us
so we might as well have fun while we can
[rather than worrying ourselves
into complete stagnancy]
August 20, 2025
as fall approaches
but isn’t quite here
not yet
not yet
the memories of late summers past
invades my mind
sans consent
[do flashbacks ever ask?]
and no matter how stable
and lovely
and mine
my life is today
i keep seeing
loss
upon loss
upon lost trust
upon that feeling of any control in life
fleeting though it may have been
stolen in an instant
and this current administration
certainly doesn’t help this
weird ptsd i’ve found myself in
everything seems to be
culminating in something
and i continue to avoid all emotions and memories
until absolutely
necessary
August 11, 2025
i heard a stat the other day
that straight depression
[and also perhaps straight anxiety
don’t know specifically, since the show
was only about depression management]
is so much easier to treat
than the intertangled combo of the two
and coming from someone who has been officially diagnosed
with major depressive disorder
and generalized anxiety disorder
[at the same time]
and feel like i’ve never known a brain
without the two holding metaphorical hands,
this sounds quite accurate
what gives me distress?
is it the depression?
is it the anxiety?
i honestly have a hard enough time differentiating the two
since they seem to egg each other on
like the “bad kids” at the back of the classroom,
and simply identifying one
or the other
is trouble enough
how would i even begin to just take on
one
or the other?
[and, honestly, i also have to ask
how
in the world
someone even could have one
without the other?]
watch
in fifty or so years
they’ll change the diagnoses,
and my particular issues
will be called something different
[and maybe, by then, they’ll have come up with
a great treatment regiment…
but for now, i just keep trying to keep them both at bay
as best i can
with the resources available
to me/
to us]
June 20, 2025
uncertainty
in what to write
in what to do
at any given moment
day
or night
the uncertainty
is what freezes me
not potential good
or bad outcomes
but all the options
showing themselves to me
beat
by beat
by beat
until
the overwhelm becomes too much
that inaction is the safest path to take
[but it actually
never really
is]
June 12, 2025
how can there be
so much horror in the world
alongside such beauty?
how can death happen one day
and the next, the miracle of a whole new life?
how can those celebrating a graduation/
a union/
pure friendship
be next door to
domestic violent terror
in one’s own home?
i haven’t figured out yet
how to be a happy person
while also knowing
so much that happens behind
tightly closed doors
in front of
tightly shut eyes
because, from my position here,
it feels counterintuitive —
i’m trapped in feeling like
one thing cannot be acknowledged
if the other isn’t also
but perhaps that’s my own black and white
fault
thinking
because there’s also
often
mundane day happening
alongside mundane day
and it’s the grey that
somehow
sometimes
keeps us going
May 26, 2025
quiet the mind
just enough to hear the important thoughts/
the creative thoughts/
the thoughts that are often drowned out
by anxiety rambling
and existential depression blues
there may be creative moments
inside those diatribes
but i’ve heard enough of them to know —
it’s getting past them
that the true me
lies
[in truth]
kipventures 