spelunking

consider yourselves warned: this is offensively long and really just me venting about a life-altering depressive episode and an equally life-altering codependent friendship. for some reason, i needed to write about it. maybe it’ll offer some insight into why i am the way i am; it’s definitely a crucial piece of my story but also one that’s too long, complicated and emotionally fraught to be easily brought up and talked about in-person.

like i said, it’s horrifically long. my counseling session got rescheduled, which is kind of a good thing because now i get to ramble about this knowing anyone who pays attention to it has freely chosen to do so. now i have free rein to talk about someone i still love dearly, and a friendship that shaped the person i’ve become.

for some reason, i’ve been thinking a lot about someone i don’t speak to anymore. her name was sarah, and she’s responsible for some of the best and worst things i’ve ever experienced. to this day, i’ve never had a friendship match the bond we had, but today i can recognize that’s probably a good thing. at the time, i was so wrapped up in the novel feeling of genuine, all-encompassing love that i failed to notice the imbalance in effort between us or how codependent that friendship became. but for a year and a half, we were inseparable, and i still think of her as my first love. we got on like a house on fire, and she absolutely helped me become a better person.

sarah and i on a sunrise hike, summer 2021

but sarah was also two grades above me, and when she moved out-of-state for college, that friendship started to deteriorate. i went into a tailspin that turned into the worst depressive episode of my life, lasting six months during the fall semester of my junior year of high school. i watched my grades plummet and my relationships suffer, and yet i was powerless to pull myself out of it. eventually i learned to devote the tiny bit of mental energy i had to absolute necessities and nothing else. 

sarah, bless her heart, really tried to help me. but as i sank further, every new effort just left me feeling more and more worthless, and eventually her frustration at not being able to help me started to emerge more and more.

on another hike, fall 2020. 

the last time we spoke was a few hours before 2022 began. we had a massive fight and something in me finally reached its breaking point. in the wake of going no-contact that night, both of our lives changed drastically. over the course of a good six months, i rebuilt friendships, found new hobbies, and dug myself out of that depressive slump while i watched sarah end up where i had been, but somehow pushed down every instinct to reach back out and try to help het because i refuse to take the risk of ending up where i once was. i hate what i went through as a result of that friendship, but i can’t hate sarah. i still love her and hurt for her and wish with all my heart that i could be there for her like i used to. 

yes, i have a lot of photos of us on hikes.

so i did what any self-respecting bitch-with-a-backstory would do and wrote a poem about it, concerning myself less with the quality of the writing and more with getting my feelings out and finding a halfway decent metaphor for one of the most drastically and permanently life-altering experiences i’ve had. poems aren’t my strong suit, but sometimes they work for what i need to get out of my head. anyways, here’s wonderwall (the obscenely long notes-app poem i wrote about depression and my first heartbreak).

there’s a gaping cave we’ve both explored.
i don’t know how that came to be. 
you’d been in the entrance before,
and its shallow depths weren’t new to me. 
so you didn’t start to worry
as i wandered further in. 

i knew it wasn’t wise,
but i couldn’t help myself

and how bad could it really get?
by the time you noticed i was in far deeper

where the daylight never reaches 

and the air starts going dead.
it grew harder to get up 
and make my way back out.
in your fear you yelled to me, 
tried to save me 
every way that you knew how.
but i simply couldn’t do it, 
could barely will my body to move. 
i didn’t have the breath to shout back when you called out.

in that dark i lost all track of time. 
i just needed to curl up and rest a while,
i thought i told you that. 
but maybe in that dead air smothering me
the sentence never left my head. 
you went in after me,
but seemed to push me further down.
i couldn’t tell if it was you that smothered me

or the air that was all around. 
finally, i reached the back of the cave, 
and i somehow found the strength
to kick out and make you leave me
and let me save myself. 
and finally you did. 
and only then i found the strength 
to claw back through the dark. 
and when i reached the surface, 
you were well and truly out. 
my world was different when i reemerged. 
everything felt different. 
i rebuilt my life from scratch, 
because you’d taken with you all the stuff i’d had.
my friend tells me you went back to the cave
not too long after i got out. 
she says you went in deep,
and i remembered well that horrid deadly dark. 
i want to go in after you
but i know it’d kill me
if you dragged me down again
the way you started to.
i still come back to that cave,

but i never go in as far as you did,
or to the depths where i’d once been.
i know where the dead air starts,
remember how it felt. 

and when that feeling comes back again,

i know to run like hell back out. 

i’ll never tempt fate again, 

let myself stray that far down. 
but i wish i could pull you out with me, 
save you from the darkness where i nearly drowned. 
and even if i lost all i’d built my life around
now i’ve got a new one

and a memory that i could write 

a thousand shitty poems about.