Tag: depression

Train Tracks

Train Tracks

The train tracks used to

speak to me.

As susurration –

a withdrawing tide at my ankles,

a lariat around my leaden heart.

 

A disguised lullaby,

like an offer from bathtub water of

murmured matrimony.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, September 2017

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While I still struggle with depression and anxiety on and off in my life, there was a time that it was so deep, the train tracks tempted me daily. Clearly, I never gave in. However, it’s something powerful enough, that I wanted to write about it. If you have thoughts of suicide, please seek help. Please know someone out there loves you.

Child’s Fairy Tale

When I was a child, I saw with blinded eyes.

White sheets by my side down my living room aisle.

Human porcelain came to life and lip-gloss gave me years.

Plastic plugs clipped on my ears, a lollipop took away tears.

Pairs of socks stuffed into my shirt, toes sink into giant shoes.

Little pink frills upon my skirt and a piece of rubber to chew.

Pink cotton fluffs propped up on sticks, games that I never lose.

Magic tricks and vanilla splotched cheeks,

No sickness a mother couldn’t soothe.

 

Sunflower fields and golden wings around my head.

Bare feet pitter-pattering, when I believed everything said.

When a penny was a lot and money had colors.

Boy was the world nice then!

Tucked into bed with a goodnight kiss,

to awaken to a reality without mend.

 

Empty spaces during dark phases,

the world just cries and wails.

No white horses, just fifty percent divorces,

a world full of broken fairy tales.

Ripped pages and dried ink, the fantasy is now the past.

Tears at the brink from this reality, breaking the heart like glass.

Dying trees, unknown disease, and an education that always fails.

So next time you see a little girl with wings, underneath her golden veil.

Just keep passing by; it’d best be wise, to not say a single word.

Just hope she doesn’t open her eyes,

peaceful and undisturbed.

 

For being a child is a luxury,

she deserves the sugarcoated lies.

At least for a while, at least for some time,

Let the poor girl taste the sweets.

Because as she lives and the pages all end,

that’s all it’ll ever be.

A sweetness with a bad after taste.

Just a nice sugar coated dream.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 4/30/2006, edited 4/30/2015

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Wow, I wrote this almost an entire decade ago! I found it and realized I had written it the same day as today, except it was 2006. I thought it was meant to be published here today. This was originally inspired by a quote from the bible and my dark afterthoughts at the time. I was purposely aiming for that nursery rhyme feel.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, felt like a child, reasoned like a child: when I became a man, I put from me childish ways

1 Corinthians 13:11

Untitled

Like tryna’ to catch water.
Could never win, no matter how much I fought her.

A pointless carousel, I watched it dissolve.
Those revolving doors,
couldn’t take it anymore,
as they took us round and round,
and I wound up a deserter.

Couldn’t pretend, couldn’t float on the deep end,
felt like an accessory to murder.

Whenever she defiled her worth, didn’t matter what she deserved,
but I couldn’t weather the rewind.

Had to repeat history, had to re-loop misery,
Couldn’t remain blind.

I tried to be hero, tried wise mediator.
Instead I became a powerless spectator.

Maybe my shoulders weren’t strong.
Like slow motion she willingly leaped off
into an ocean of sharks.

Like rolling under a the wheel of a truck.
Like running through a fire.
Poking an electric socket, she was dead set on drowning –
Wired.
No matter the life jacket, what advice she gets,
the only place she could live
were those thorny roads I abandoned.

When a part of you gets gangrene,
you cut it off.
There’s nothing more helpless
than loving one who doesn’t love herself.

And so I swept it under the rug.
Saved myself even though it hurt.
Had to release her from my clutch because I loved her too much,
and I was done being burned.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 3/12/2015

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I once had a friend who was more like my sister. She was a part of me, but she was no good for me. And she was no good to herself. Sometimes when you love someone, you’ve gotta let them go. It’s one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make in my life, and sometimes, I miss her… I hope she’s out there, and I hope she’s finally learned to love herself.

Beloved Stranger

Beloved Stranger
I knew you in the dark
Where the depths
Blind us from one another

I knew that gaping hole
That swallows more and more of you
With each passing day

I knew the wandering in the desert
When the sun blanches our eyes
And it’s too cold at night

Even though I knew you
I never found you
Beloved stranger

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 2/12/2015

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Was thinking of a cousin of mine who would have been the same age as me, but she passed away years ago. We were a lot alike, but living states away, we never realized it. Long story short, she suffered from depression, hung out with the wrong crowd, and passed away getting drunk one night with friends before their car pitched into a lake or river. She gave up one day, and God took her.

Sometimes I wonder how I was never able to find someone in the same darkness I was fumbling around in at the time. I wonder sometimes, what if we would’ve found each other somehow? Would she still be here today?

The penguin on a recent episode of Gotham had an odd moment of wisdom. He said, “Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light”. Could I have been her friend in the darkness? I will never know now…