Ghosts of the Navigator

This isn’t a survival story but a story where I’m still here.

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There were mornings I didn’t get up.
Not in the cute, snooze button sense. That kind of tired I understood.
I mean I didn’t fucking get up.

Shower? Nope. Eating? Rarely.
Work? Eventually.
But only because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t.
Not to me, but to the image of me I’d been dragging along.

Sometimes I call it a fog. But that feels too soft.
It’s more like walking in wet cement and every breath hardens it.
You move less and you become less.

I used to think depression looked like tears and sad music.
Mine looked like silence.
Avoided texts. Unpaid bills. Missed shifts. Standing in the grocery store staring at food for an appetite I didn’t have.

I didn’t know how heavy nothing feels.

And if you’re lucky, or stubborn, or just connected to enough people,
you don’t disappear.

I didn’t get better.
Not really.
But I got functional.

And that sounds bleak. Until you’ve been non-functional.
Then it’s everything.

I started to find anchors again.
Little things.
A good coffee. A walk. A good conversation. A community.

I carry it with me still, that version of me. Chained, and quieter.
Not chained in a weighed-down way, but tethered.
Tethered to what matters.
And I carry it differently.
Not as a shadow.
More like a scar.

It doesn’t always hurt.
But it reminds me.
And that’ll do.