Depression Dress

So I have this dress guys. I don't know who wore it before me, but I have a feeling they were very sad, and perhaps I now, occasionally, wear some of the despair in transference. It is an unflattering piece of fashion, that dress, and it is only meant to be worn in the safe cover of darkness. 

I remember it was gifted to me by my mom, back when I was just beginning to navigate my twenties and I had not yet been contaminated by maisha ya anasa. I remember my mother had gone thrifting at Kawangware market and brought me the nightie so I could stop sleeping in t-shirts marketing barbed wire or cement. 

You know for someone who walks around life on autopilot, I don’t know how I manage to attach fiction to my clothes. But is it fiction that if it rains every time, I wear that brown button-down dress? Or if every time I take a long-haul trip to rock bottom it usually starts in that blue dress with black stars? I think not.

There are three significant periods of my life where I have found myself galavanting the streets of rock bottom. Between a devastating heartbreak, loss, and sexual assault, I think myself a sort of regular on these wretched streets. And I have a lookbook for it! The blue dress coming apart on the seams as we speak to achieve a salsa-ish look, an eccentric hair ensemble achieved by not washing, combing, or oiling it, the glorious scent of body odor from three+ days of no contact with water, and a mouth could send a dentist to therapy. To help in exorcising the depression demon by way of sneezing when you begin recovery, leave the curtains untouched. In the spirit of killing two birds, and your will to live, in one stone, you don't bother turning on the lights. The darkness works magic in setting the mood.

When I put on my depression attire and crawl into bed, the world stops everywhere but in my head. The journey to the pits is like one of those nights where you start with a video on baking a carrot cake but two hours later, you're helping primitive-looking men build a swimming pool in the forest. Except it doesn’t stop for days on end. And instead of questionable videos, you are overanalyzing every decision you have ever made, with particular emphasis on mistakes. This turns you into a magician because anthills will turn into mountains and puddles will become oceans.

Let me tell you Maina, there are not enough self-help quotes that will lift you from this hole unless you are mentally ready. The thing that works for me is just giving in and drowning until I find the strength to swim. The cloud hangs on longer before shark week because hormones and the blue dress tend to make an appearance frequently during this week.

To be frank, I don't know why I hang on to this nightie. I'm not 21 anymore, I have better and dare I say, sexier, sleepwear but I keep this dress clean and ready for the next spiral. Maybe it's because I have come to accept that life is a series of adrenaline-rushing highs and soul-crushing lows. Or maybe it's just an acknowledgment that I no matter how long I stay in that dress, I eventually manage to come out of it. And that is a fighting chance I’m willing to take.