Engineered to Fall Apart

I’ve had this thing inside me

for as long as i can remember.

-

It didn’t start with anything dramatic,

no big event,

no terrible trauma,

no miserable childhood.

Just a feeling

wrongness,

quiet,

slow,

since I was just a kid.

Just this emptiness that clung to me like wet clothes.

Like a miscalculation in the formula,

something off, but invisible.

-

They say some of us are born softer,

our walls thinner,

our chemistry a little more fragile

like glass under pressure.

-

It came early,

and while i tried to be normal,

it was always just a step behind.

or beside.

or inside.

-

I was born like this,

with something missing.

A weakness no one could see,

a soft spot in my biology.

I never stood a chance against science.

-

There’s no real reason why it happened.

No choice I made,

nothing I failed to do.

It’s just how my brain was built.

-

Some people are born more sensitive

their design is different.

More vulnerable to sadness, to emptiness.

Less able to feel pleasure or energy or meaning.

That’s what happened to me.

It’s not because I failed,

it’s because my internal code was written this way.

It’s in the biology.

Genetics.

-

From the outside, everything seemed stable.

But inside, the mechanism was off.

A background force always pulling me down,

like gravity, but heavier.

-

It isn’t something that visits,

it’s part of the equation,

a constant,

this heaviness,

this lack.

Not always dominant,

but never zero.

-

Some days I can’t get out of bed.

That’s not laziness

that’s a full system shutdown,

my body feels like it’s sinking into the floor,

like I’m weighed down by something no one can see.

-

And now it’s just part of me,

my shadow,

my background noise,

my first language.

-

I didn’t choose it,

but i’m stuck with it,

forever, maybe.

-

And so we live together

me, and it.

This thing i never invited but that knows me best,

my longest friend,

my darkest passenger.

They call it depression,

i call it my oldest companion.